By Shari Feuz — Guest Blogger
Shari Feuz
You already know that regular exercise plays a massive role in boosting energy levels, enhancing appearance and increasing confidence. Regular workouts also enhance creativity and release anti-aging hormones. Daily workouts are a successful women’s must-do. The good news is that you can fit everything you need into 20 minutes a day.
Gone are the days when an effective workout was a grueling, two-hour ordeal. Here are five ways to get the most bang for your buck from each workout and keep it under 20 minutes:
- Say goodbye to hour-long treadmill excursions. Twenty minutes of high-intensity intervals burn more calories and boost metabolism significantly more than a 60-minute, moderately paced jaunt. Try 30-second high speed sprints on a treadmill, bike or elliptical with one-minute intervals of lower intensity in between. Aim for seven-to-10 high-intensity intervals.
- Get swinging — a kettlebell, that is. The American Council on Exercise (ACE) demonstrated that participants burned approximately 20 calories per minute during a typical kettlebell workout. That is a whopping 400 calories in a 20-minute workout.
- Don’t mess around isolating tiny muscle groups. Instead, perform compound-strength movements. These are weight-training exercises that use multiple muscle groups and more energy. Multi-muscle strength-training movements such as squats, lunges, presses and pulldowns should be your first choice in the gym.
- Combine strength and cardio training into a circuit. Twenty one-minute intervals will cover all of your major muscle groups, and keep the heart rate elevated for maximum health benefits and fat burning. For example, do a one-minute station on a bike, lift weights at the next station, skip rope at the next and so on, alternating a strength exercise with a cardio activity.
- Don’t fear the bulk. Lift heavy weights and take your muscles to a high level of fatigue during resistance training. There is no faster way to tighten and tone your physique.
Shari Feuz B.A. is a fitness professional with a passion for guiding people to achieve mastery over how their body looks, feels and performs.
