Ever wish you could get into the brains of some of top fitness pros and trainers to find out what REALLY works?
We interviewed the top fitness bloggers and asked them one question. ALL for YOU!
You’re Welcome 🙂
If you only had 20 minutes a day to workout and could only use your bodyweight, what would you do?
Here are our top answers:
“To get the most out of your time, you should focus on exercises with a high ‘bang for their buck’, so to speak. Exercises that work multiple muscles groups include squats, lunges, push-ups, pull-ups and bridges.
If your main goal is to build muscle, you will want to progress to more challenging bodyweight exercises over time (which is just like using progressively heavier weights in the gym). I’ve got a list of 101 bodyweight exercises for each body part, arranged by difficulty, here.
If, on the other hand, your main goal is to lose fat, then you’ll want to perform the exercises in a circuit with little rest between movements. The focus is on intensity in a circuit, so simple bodyweight exercises work best (because they reduce the risk of injury). I’ve got a free 20 minute beginner bodyweight workout that you can get here.”
“First I would start with full burpees as this will warm-up the entire body and increase the heart rate very fast. Getting your heart rate up as fast as possible is essential to getting efficient results. So with limited time this is vital. Second I would follow this circuit below with no rest in between until the 20 minutes is up. This circuit covers plenty of lower body exercises, along with core, and upper body. It also includes strength exercises and cardiovascular so you will get the “best bang for you buck” with a program similar to this one. This entire circuit should take about 5-6 minutes so you should have ample time to complete 3 full rounds in the 20 minutes assuming you will probably slow down with each round as you begin to fatigue. I would love to hear feedback on this workout from someone who tries this!”
15 burpees
15 stationary lunges each leg
15 v-ups
15 sit-ups
15 deep squat jumps
15 running butt kicks each foot
15 running high knees each knee
15 pushups
15 side plank dips
15 bench dips
“I would perform at least three main exercise variations: an upper body push (e.g., push-up), upper body pull (e.g., inverted row), and lower body exercise (e.g., skater squat). With those three exercise variations I’d work the majority of my body. I’d use a challenging variation for each exercise for a specific rep range.
For example: one day I could focus on building maximum strength with push-ups, inverted rows, and skater squats. To accomplish this I could perform those three exercises in circuit fashion for something like 5×5 (5 sets, 5 reps). I’d use a challenging variation for each exercise and I’d improve my performance each time I repeated the workout by doing: 1) more reps with the same variation, or, 2) make the variation a bit more challenging.
For another workout I could use the same exercises but use an easier variation and provided higher reps; something like 4×10-12 reps would work well.
Improving your performance is mandatory, and I’d strive to do a little better each time I repeated a workout. The terrific thing about bodyweight exercises is that the can be scaled; you can tweak exercises to make them easier or more difficult.
In summation: if I only had 20 minutes I’d perform circuits with three compound exercises (upper body push and pull, and lower body exercise) and improve my performance when I repeated the workouts by performing more reps with the same variations, and then making the exercises a bit more challenging.”
“If we only had 20 minutes to work out and could only use our body weight, we’d do some high-intensity interval training with moves like lunges, squats, sit-ups, planks, push-ups, burpees, mountain climbers and plyo jumps. We’d also run or walk or dance! :)”
And of course, from our very own Darren Shane at TheHumanTrainer.com CLICK HERE
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