Workouts can be intimidating, inconvenient, and time consuming. And worst of all, our bodies will eventually get used to whatever we put them through on a regular basis, making all our efforts less and less effective with time. But we can work with this adaptive response by not limiting our fat burning sessions to one time a day, a few days a week.
Mini workouts can be done anywhere, at home, in the office, at a park, anywhere. And they can last for 5 to 10 minutes, and that's as long as they need to be in order to be very effective. The key with these workouts effectiveness is to keep your metabolism high and demanding energy throughout the day, rather than going through extreme highs and lows that occur with sitting at the office and training at the gym.
While these workouts are perhaps not ideal for bodybuilding, the are the ideal solution for those who have reached a fat loss plateau, as they're convenient, quick, and can be done anywhere with basic bodyweight exercises. The key is to concentrate on compound movements which draw many muscle groups in to play at the same time, and to work to exhaustion as quickly as possible.
Some of the best exercises, assuming you're not at a gym and don't have a bar to hang from are, in order of importance, the bodyweight squat, pushups, crunches or slow mountain climbers, and lunges. If you have a pull-up bar in the house or resistance bands, adding a rowing motion or pull-up motion for the back and biceps is also recommended. But regardless of which of the exercises above are selected, the key is to perform them in a circuit fashion with no rest in between exercises.
Granted, this workout presupposes that you can perform a pushup, either regular ones or from the knees in some form, squats that go deep enough to work most of the muscles of the leg, and can perform at least a few crunches. One should also choose exercises that can be performed at least 8 to 10 times, and as many as 50 to 100 reps per set. This type of training is ideal for those looking to blast off that last 10 to 15 pounds of extra fat.
A sample exercise, which can be performed two or three times a day would be to perform pushups until you can't complete a rep or until you have a heavy burn set in, then to go immediately into bodyweight squats until another rep can't be performed, and then into crunches until another rep can't be performed. That is it. No three to five sets, no set number of reps. You push your body to the limit as quickly as possible, and then rest. If you do these three times a day and are not seeing results, you can add a second set to each workout, but I highly doubt you'll need it. One set should take less than 2 minutes, and 2 sets, with a one to two minute rest should take 5 to 8 minutes in total.
For most people, one circuit performed twice a day is enough to see fast results. This is a powerful metabolic supercharge that can accompany your regular training routine or replace it all together. And as always, eat a healthy diet with regular meals 5 to 6 times a day to avoid energy highs and lows throughout the day.
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