The Ten Minute Workout
My biggest pet peeve is when people say they do not have time to work out. I guarantee that everyone has 10 minutes to spare during a typical day, and fortunately 10 minutes is more than enough time for a killer workout. The beauty of working out for short, intense bursts is that you can elevate your heart rate and stimulate a toning effect on muscles.
Here are some of my favorite 10-minute workouts. They will leave you sucking for air and completely exhausted. The key with these short routines is that you must exercise consistently with high intensity to get significant results.
• Burn as many calories as you can on the Airdyne, SkiErg, rower, or any piece of cardio equipment. My record is around 300 calories in 10 minutes on the Airdyne, and it was extremely painful.
• Perform as many burpee pull-ups as you can in. The beauty of burpee pull-ups is that they work every part of your body. It is a compound movement and will get your muscles fatigued and your lungs screaming.
• Pick two exercises and get as many reps as you can of both. When you can’t do any more reps on one exercise, go to the other, then repeat. This works well with agonist and antagonist muscles because when one muscle is working the other is resting. A good example is a push exercise such as a push-up vs. a pulling exercise such as a pull-up.
• Do 10 minutes of an isometric hold. Every time you stop, you get a penalty of whatever exercise you hate the most. Some good isometric holds include planks, wall sits, handstands, rack holds, slosh pipe holds, lunge holds, overhead holds, and ring holds. Make the penalty hard so you do not want to stop your isometric hold.
• Use the tabata rep scheme on a bodyweight exercise or cardio machines. Tabata is 20 seconds intense work followed by 10 seconds of rest. You can pick one exercise for the entire 10 minutes or pick two for five minutes apiece.
Next time you tell yourself you do not have any time during the day put down that remote and crank it for just 10 minutes. You will feel better in the long run and remember, a 10-minute workout is always better than not working out at all.
