Total Body Workout

As many of you know, working a full time and busy job often leaves you wiped at day’s end, meaning no time for even a quick workout.  I’m a night owl so getting up even a half-hour early is brutal.  However, I recently started waking up just 10m earlier to do a quick cardio blast.  Some benefits:

• Gets the metabolism kicking early, giving you an energy boost to start the day.
• It forces you to get *some* exercise in during the day.
• It’s only 10m earlier – if I can commit to it, anyone can!

I was inspired to try this after reading about an “incredible” 4-minute cardio workout – check out the videos and exercises highlighted.  That 4m blast is pretty hard, essentially going 20s on, 10s off for a full 4m.  The idea is to go as hard as you can for an interval, then rest for another interval; repeat.  I find I need to burn at least 3-5 minutes warming up, then prefer 30-45s interval with 20-30s rest.  You can tailor it to your fitness level and what you want to achieve.

Here’s what I have settled on:

• “Warm Up” (4m) – walk in place, steadily higher knees (2m), light jog or jump rope motion in place (2m)
• Blast (1m) – jumping jacks (40s), walk in place (20s)
• Blast (1m) – run in place, knees high and arms pumping (40s), walk in place (20s)
• Blast (1m) – burpees (30-40s), walk in place (20s-30s)
• Blast (1m) – seal jacks (40s), walk in place (20s)
• Blast (1m) – push ups or push up jacks (40s), walk in place (20s)
• Blast (1m) – skater jumps (40s), walk in place

Sometimes I vary them or throw in push-ups or pull-ups (I have a bar) depending on if I’ll be doing weights later in the day.  If I had to choose just a no-frills basic interval blast, I would just do jumping jacks.

The best thing is that it only takes 10m – if you do it later in the day when you’re more limber, you could probably cut it down even further.  Give it a shot!