Time: You don’t have much to spare, but you can’t exercise without spending it. You could rush between exercises like the Tasmanian devil — and risk injury. You could cut back on your training and miss out on important moves. Or you could choose a workout where working against the clock is built into the program.
That would be every minute to the minute, or EMO, getting closer. It’s a challenging, scalable and surprisingly fun approach to standard issue strength training.
Here’s how you can make EMOM workouts work for you, whatever your goals.
What are EMOM workouts?
In an EMOM workout, you exercise in one-minute blocks. In each block, you perform a predetermined number of repetitions of a given movement and then rest the remainder of that minute.
This approach emphasizes work density, or the amount of work you can perform in a set period of time.
In a normal strength training program, 10 reps of squats might take you 10 seconds, or it might take you 50 seconds. But in an EMOM workout, you’re constantly on the clock and speed (without losing form!) is of the essence. This motivates you to move efficiently and quickly and guarantees that both your muscles and your cardiovascular system will get a killer workout.
“I also like the EMOM approach because it’s so easy to change the volume,” says Jolie Kobrinsky, RKC, TRX, owner of Elektren Studio in Seaside, CA. “Everyone from an elite athlete to an advanced practitioner can do the same workout in the same amount of time.”
And by adjusting the load, exercises, repetition patterns, and training structure, you can tailor the EMOM approach to nearly any fitness goal, whether you’re aiming for greater strength, bigger muscles, less fat, or greater speed and athleticism.
Benefits of EMOM workouts
Here are some of the ways EMOM workouts will change the way you train and help you push your limits.
1. Efficiency
Few training standards are as effective as EMOM. You have no choice but to follow the clock, eliminating wasted time between sets (or circuits) and exercises. Even if you only have 12 minutes to exercise, you can create an EMOM workout that effectively uses every second of that time.
2. Cardiovascular preparation
Traditional strength training is usually performed at a relatively slow pace — you complete a set, rest for a few minutes, then repeat. When you’re on the clock, you can’t afford to wait until you’re ready for your next set. When the time comes, go.
This ensures that your heart rate stays high throughout the workout, helping you burn more calories as you challenge and increase the efficiency of your entire cardiovascular system.
3. Improved work capacity
Increasing strength and power are worthy goals—and you can achieve both with EMOM—but the EMOM approach is also a highly effective way to increase work capacity (ie, the amount of work you can complete in a given period of time), which is another key aspect of fitness and one that is often neglected.
How to structure an EMOM workout
There are many different ways to design an EMOM workout (eg straight sets of the same exercise, supersets that combine different exercises, etc.), but it works especially well for circuit training.
- Choose a set of exercises, determine your number of repetitions for each movement based on your fitness goal, and decide how many times you will repeat the circuit (more on how to determine the number of repetitions and circuit rounds below).
- Structure your circuit to alternate between either upper and lower body movements (eg back squats and bicep curls) or movements that target muscles in the front and back of your body (eg squats). dumbbell chest press and squat row).
- Set a timer — ideally one you can set to sound at the top of every minute — and hit the Start button. There are many interval timer apps available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store — we like SmartWOD and Interval Timer.
- At the top of the first minute, perform the predetermined number of repetitions of your first exercise. Rest for the remaining minute.
- At the top of the next minute, perform the predetermined number of repetitions for your next movement, resting for the remainder of the minute.
- Repeat the process until you have completed all the exercises in the circuit, then start the circuit again.
Angelo Poli, SPN, ISSA, owner of Whole Body Fitness in Chico, Calif., points out that most people start off strong with an EMOM workout, completing the work portion of each set in 20 seconds or less, earning a leisurely 40 seconds. Vacation.
But as the workout continues, fatigue builds up and the work-rest ratio is thrown into disarray: “Suddenly you’re taking 40 seconds to complete the reps, which means you’re only resting for 20 seconds,” he says. “Before long, rest periods drop to almost zero. By the end of the workout, you’re on the floor, exhausted!”
Types of EMOM workouts
Follow these tips to structure an EMOM workout based on different fitness goals.
EMOM for strength
If your goal is strength, choose compound (multi-joint) movements (eg, bench press, bent-over row, pull-up, lunge, squat) and do four to five rounds of your cycle using relatively heavy loads and low reps (three to five) for each movement.
EMOM for sports
Choose full-body, explosive movements (eg, jumping jacks, dumbbell lunges, T-pushups, kettlebell swings) and perform three to four rounds of your cycle using four to eight reps with moderate loads for each movement.
EMOM for fat loss
Choose high-intensity, full-body movements (eg, dumbbell swing, lunge to press, mountain climber, burpee) using lighter loads for higher reps (12 to 15) and more rounds (four to five).
EMOM for muscle growth
Choose compound movements and use moderate loads and repetitions (three to four rounds of your circuit with 8 to 12 repetitions per movement).
How to Make an EMOM Workout Easier (or Harder)
One of the best features of EMOM is its scalability, or how easily you can adjust the intensity to suit any fitness level. “There are four basic ways to vary the intensity,” says Poli. “Increase or decrease the load, repetitions, exercise difficulty or rest periods. Reducing that last one is my favorite — mostly because it makes things so damn hard!”
