In the column on the right you'll find three workouts that make use of the latest time-saving training philosophies. And here are a few clock-beating workout tips you can apply to any exercise session.

Streamline your warm-up
If possible, jog to the gym as a warm-up, then go straight into the weights room and start your workout. If it’s not possible, do the first upper- and lower-body exercises in your workout back to back without any weights. This both warms you up and primes your nervous system to fire your muscles in the correct sequence once you add weight to the move.

Don’t get isolated
‘If you’ve only got 15 minutes, don’t bother trying to isolate individual muscles – aim to hit several at once and preferably the whole body,’ says Darren Roberts of Peak Performance Training. Do standing exercises such as a lunge to press that require more than one joint to perform and allow you to lift large weights.

Never queue
If the bench press is busy, move on and adapt the exercise to the available equipment. A gym ball and dumb-bells can replace a bench and barbell and can offer extra benefits – in this case an additional core workout.

Target movements, not muscles
Switching your focus away from individual muscle groups or body parts and towards movements such as ‘pull’ or ‘push’ frees up your workout so you can hit a lot of muscles at once. Use multi-joint and multi-directional exercises such as the woodchop. Team this move with vertical movement exercises (such as pull-ups) and horizontal ones (such as the bench press).

Sacrifice a cardio session
A high-intensity 15-minute weights workout can improve your endurance performance. A study from Finland’s Jyväskylä University showed that athletes who replaced 20 per cent of their cardio work with an explosive strength training session recorded a three per cent faster average speed when running.

Pump up the volume
Do five reps on the bench press with as much weight as you can handle, then strip the weight to your ten-rep max and do another set, and then strip some more weight off and aim for 15 reps. This is known as volume training.