Putting Together Your Quickie Routine

Observe the following points each time that you train.

• Always warm up. Even for a quick workout, you need to prepare your body for more rigorous work. Walk briskly for five minutes before you exercise. This warm-up includes walking quickly around the house, the yard, or in the parking lot at the office.
• Work all major muscle groups. Be sure to do exercises for your upper body, your lower body, and your core a minimum of twice a week.
• Apply program variables. Even for short workouts, training frequency, exercise selection, order, amount of weight, number of reps, number of sets, and your rest periods are all still important components. Just because you’re doing a quickie workout does not mean that you can throw all the weight training principles out the window. All the rules still apply.
• Train in one minute sets. In general, one set of a particular exercise takes approximately one minute. If each rep requires two seconds up, a brief pause, and two seconds down, plan on five to six seconds per rep. Therefore, a set of 10-12 reps takes roughly one minute.
• Alternate upper and lower body exercises. When you want to reduce the waiting time during rest periods, switch between upper and lower body exercises so that one part of your body rests while the other works. Save your core exercises for last.
• Mix in stretching exercises. To be even more efficient, use your rest periods for stretches that target the muscle that you just worked. You can stretch your body all throughout the workout, and you won’t need extra time for a stretching segment at the end.

Making the Most of Quickie Training

Organize these quickies in whatever way works best for you. The following suggestions give you several ideas on how to fit quickie workouts into your lifestyle.

• Emergency total body conditioning: Normally, you do a 25-minute weight training workout 3 days a week. Imagine a time when your schedule is overloaded and you can’t possibly follow your normal workout routine. Instead of doing nothing, use one of the total body workouts to keep your muscles stimulated.
• Add on to your cardio workout: Let’s say you weight train two days a week and hit the gym for cardio on three days a week. When you can’t make it for your dedicated weight training sessions, add on a 15- or 10-minute quickie workout on the weight machines, after you finish your cardio-training.
• Divide your workout throughout the day: Sometimes it’s simply impossible to find more than a few spare minutes. Instead of giving up on strength training entirely, fit in a quickie workout in the morning and in the afternoon. You might even want to add on another session at night. Three 10- or 15-minute workouts easily add up to 30 or 45 minutes of training.
• Do a daily quickie: Maybe all you ever have time for during the week is a quickie workout. Until your life settles down and you find more time, schedule a daily quickie workout. Each day target either the upper or lower body and the core. Take Friday off. On Saturday, fit in one thorough total body workout and rest on Sunday.

Quickie Workouts for Busy Days

For best results, you want to train your entire body at least two to three times a week. Three times a week gives you faster results but takes more of your personal time. Studies show that you get 75 percent of your results from training two days a week, compared to training three days a week. Life happens. You can’t always stick to an ideal training schedule. For those days and weeks that are simply too busy, shorter workouts are better than no workouts. Or you can split up training your body into short increments daily so you hit at least each section of your body at least two times a week. Your training program needs to fit your life.
In this blog category, you get a variety of quickie workouts to use for those busy periods when you can’t follow an ideal training schedule. The quickies are organized in 10 and 15 minute segments and are appropriate for either the gym or the home. As a personal trainer and international presenter who’s trained thousands of people worldwide, Shirley recommends that you try to find at least 15 minutes each day in your schedule for a workout so that exercising becomes part of your daily routine — like brushing your teeth. These routines give you plenty of choices for what to do in those 15-minute increments.

Doing circuits at the gym

Many gyms have a dozen or so machines arranged in a circle or row called a circuit. They’re placed in a logical order (from larger to smaller muscles) so you can move from machine to machine without having to use any brainpower to decide which exercise to do next.
Some fitness facilities, such as Curves®, revolve entirely around circuit training.
Many facilities also offer cardio-resistance circuits where in-between strength training stations, they have cardio stations. For example, you may jog or march in place, do jumping jacks, or jump on a trampoline in-between lifting weights. The concept behind these workouts is keeping your heart rate at the low end of an aerobic training zone so you also receive some aerobic conditioning benefits as well. Because this workout represents a compromise, you’re not getting an optimum cardio or strength workout. Instead, you’re trying to hit two goals at once, which is of course, better than hitting only one or no goals, especially if you’re time crunched. After reviewing weight training principles, you may understand why circuits are a good place for beginners to start training. Typically, you’ll do one set at each machine and have about a 30-second rest interval between stations. This is the lower intensity side of the spectrum and has a reduced risk of injury.

Using the rest period

How long you rest in-between sets is also a part of your routine. If you want to increase maximal strength, you need a long rest period of up to four minutes. If you’re looking to improve muscular endurance, 30 seconds or even less rest is fine. And, if you want to increase size, your rest period should be about 30 seconds to one-and-a-half minutes. If you are a beginner, and that lasts for at least the first three consecutive months of training, take as long as you need. You’re considered a beginner until you have completed three consecutive months of consistent training at least two to three days a week.

Choosing the right weight

The right weight level depends on what you want to achieve from your training, because it relates to the number of reps that you perform. To develop strength, you want to do one to six reps. To increase muscle size, do between 6 to 12 reps. And, to improve endurance, do between 12 and 20 reps. A onerep max equals the total amount of weight you can lift with one repetition and means you’re giving a 100 percent effort. More reps represent what are referred to as sub-maximal loads. See the bullet points below for reference.
_ 1 rep = 100 percent
_ 2-3 reps = 95 percent
_ 4-5 reps = 90 percent
_ 6-7 reps = 85 percent
_ 8-9 reps = 80 percent
_ 10-11 reps = 75 percent
_ 12-13 reps = 70 percent
_ 14-15 reps = 65 percent
_ 16-20 reps = 60 percent

As you can see, a moderate intensity workout of lifting 70 to 80 percent of your one rep max is in the 8 to 13 rep range. Performing fewer reps — and using ultra-heavy weights — carries a greater risk of injury. And doing more than 12 reps is generally not effective for building strength, but doing up to 20 to 25 reps does improve muscular endurance. To keep yourself motivated and your muscles challenged, you may want to vary the number of reps you perform. You can use a periodized program that first emphasizes muscular strength and then later emphasizes muscular endurance. For example, you can do 6 to 8 repetitions one month and then 12 to 15 the next. Finding the right weight for each exercise requires some trial and error. Don’t be afraid to add or subtract weight after you start a set. We’ve seen people contort their bodies to finish a set just because they overestimated what they could lift but who were too embarrassed, too stubborn, or simply not aware of the huge risk of injury to drop down a plate.

Doing exercises in the right order

In general, follow the rule of doing your upper and lower body exercises in the order of your larger muscles first, and then your smaller muscles. Lastly, exercise your middle body, your lower back and abdominals, as they serve to stabilize your body as you do all the prior exercises.
Upper body

1. Chest and back (It doesn’t matter which comes first.)
2. Shoulders
3. Biceps and triceps (It doesn’t matter which comes first.)
4. Wrists

Lower body

1. Butt
2. Thighs
3. Calves and shins (It doesn’t matter which comes first although we prefer to work our calves before our shins.)

Middle body
Perform your abdominal and lower back muscle exercises in any order you want. Mix up your core stabilization exercises with those that target the mover muscles, or do your mover exercises first, followed by your stabilizer exercises or vice versa. Researchers haven’t yet determined whether an ideal order exists for training the muscles of this part of the body.