Learn How to be Super fit Using 10-Minute Exercise Bursts

Health experts advocate working out for about 30 minutes to 60 minutes a day to benefit from your fitness program. However, if you are the workaholic type, you probably don’t have the luxury to spend 30 minutes to a full hour a day exclusively for workouts.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Maybe you can’t rearrange your schedule to accommodate your workout, but you can certainly change your exercise plans to fit into your day. Fitness professional Ann Grandjean says that getting off the sofa and working around the house is a great way to get in shape. Cleaning, gardening, and any other chores will burn calories and move you closer to your fitness goals.

Every stolen moment counts

A couple of 10-minute windows in your day may not seem like enough time to get a good workout, but a recently conducted study suggests differently. It determined that men and women who took 10-minute walks or engaged in other exercise for a similar amount of time had a higher probability of exercising regularly. Also, they lost more weight on the whole than participants who worked out in 1-hour intervals.

The Professional Consensus

Exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser’s recent study conducted in Virginia involved men and women who exercised for 10 minutes at a time. The startling results showed that these men and women were able to dramatically improve their overall health by conducting 15 of these 10-minute sessions per week for one month. At the end of that time, Gaesser found his subjects as fit as men and women who were 20 years younger.

Splitting exercise into smaller blocks during your busy days can build your confidence, says time management consultant Harold Taylor. Missing out on regular gym sessions shoots down your momentum and motivation. You may surmise that fitness training isn’t worth pursuing anymore because you just don’t have the time for it. However, if you can manage to squeeze in some exercise opportunity any way you find it, however small it is, it somehow encourages you to hang in there and stay on.

Just a Supplement

Breaking up your workout into more manageable blocks is a great idea, but it can’t replace a solid, comprehensive exercise routine. For those who find it difficult to make time for a regular trip to the gym, try some of the following to give yourself a more thorough workout. Remember, what’s important is that you do it regularly.

* Take a quick walk to the corner and back, about 5 to 10 minutes of your time, first thing in the morning.

* If you’re stuck at home to care for a sick child, work on the exercise bike or Stairwalker while your “patient” is asleep.

* Set aside a few minutes to do jumping jacks. You can burn 90 calories in just 10 minutes this way.

* When cooking dinner, do some standing push-ups while waiting for the roast to cook. Push in and push out to tone your arms and shoulders.

* Go outside and shoot some baskets or play tag with your children after dinner.

* Before retiring or after applying your facial cream at night, do several reps of some dumbbell exercises. This is recommended by exercise instructor Sheila Cluff, owner of The Palms in Palm Springs, CA. She keeps a set of weights right in front of her bathroom sink.

* Join your kid at baseball or football practice and walk laps around the field.

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