A lot of people ask me how can I still exercise with my busy schedule? Especially during the holiday season and winter when daylight hours are short.
Maybe you are traveling and you don’t always have access to a gym or a class or even videos online?
Sometimes you just need to workout on the fly.
One of the best ways to squeeze in a quick workout is what’s called Tabata exercises. You may have also heard of it as HIIT exercise – high intensity interval training. Here in the New Life Chiropractic, Rocklin office we offer a program based on these same principles called Max T-3.
How Can A Short Workout Be Effective?
Getting great results from short workouts is all about higher intensity exercise over a short period of time!
The good part is you can access many workout ideas via apps on your phone. I have a Tabata app on my phone. Basically the way that it works is you do 20 seconds of exercise followed by 20 seconds of rest and you repeat that exercise 8 times.
So I’m just going to do a quick demonstration. I’m going to do a few different exercises just to give you an idea of some of the things that you can do. But typically you do the same exercise for 8 rounds and each Tabata set is only 4 minutes.
At a minimum you can do at least one set which is 4 minutes, but you can always do two or three or four sets if you feel like adding more in of different exercises.
Exercises you can do at home with no equipment, while you’re traveling, visiting family, or whatever you’re doing.
A single set of Tabata exercises takes just four minutes per day, which everybody has. Remember that you work at maximum intensity for 20 seconds and then take 20 seconds of rest.
Squats
There are many variations on the simple squat that you can do, for example:
- Air squat
- Squat with a hop
- Wall squat
Running in place
You’re just running in place, moving the arms, moving the legs, getting your knees up as high as possible. Or if you’re just starting, you can do stepping in place just to get things moving. But ideally you want to move as quick and as fast as possible.
Lunges
- Switch legs after each lunch
- One leg for half the time and then switch to the other leg.
- Split squat (with a jump) if you want to increase the intensity.
Hops
- Side to side hop
- Step from side to side if you need to decrease intensity or have joint issues
- Front to back hop
- Squat jump forward and back
- Try to jump over something like a bench.
Have Questions on Safe and Effective Workouts?
Contact us today if you need specific exercise recommendations for your health concern.
Have you had the opportunity to join us at one of our community education events yet? During the community education events, Dr. Tim sifts through all of the knowledge out there to bring you key information about how to get healthy and stay that way and shares answers to frequently asked questions on chiropractic care and healthy eating.