Did you know that you don’t actually need to exercise one, two or more hours a day to get results? There are many misconceptions in the fitness industry, and the need to spend hours exercising every day in order to reach your goals is one of them. It’s time to remove this misconception from your mind because you can get a great, effective, full body workout in 15-30 minutes, just by being efficient with your time and the exercises you choose.
Finding time to exercise can be hard, and then figuring out what exercises to do can add to the challenge. Yet it’s actually really easy to create a 30-minute simple, effective workout plan with some basic considerations. When a fitness trainer builds a program for clients they consider many things, but the four major guidelines are the type of exercise (mode), how hard (intensity), how often (frequency) and for how long (duration) are you exercising. Each of these guidelines affect the other, for example if you are going to increase the intensity in your workout, then you can shorten the duration.
In order to reap the benefits of exercise in a shorter amount of time, focus on increasing the intensity. To do that, you can use either an interval or continuous circuit-training style. Interval training involves high-intensity exercises with recovery periods for a certain length of time. A continuous circuit incorporates set exercises and reps to be completed in a specific duration or for a fixed amount of rounds. Here is an example of each training style to help you get a great workout in 30 minutes or less:
Interval Workout Example: 3-4 rounds of 30 seconds work / 30 seconds rest
- Push-ups
- Sit-ups or Crunches
- Squats
- Russian Twists
- Alternating Lunges
Continuous Circuit Example: Complete reps of each movement for as many rounds as possible in 15-20 min.
- 16 Push-ups
- 16 Sit-ups or Crunches
- 16 Squats
- 16 Russian twists
- 16 Alternating Lunges
With either of these formats, a day of exercise would consist of 5 minutes warming-up, 15-20 minutes working out and then 5 minutes cooling down to get a great workout in 30 minute
s or less. Give both a try to compare what works best for you. Regardless, you’ll experience an effective, efficient workout with time to spare!
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