With kids in the house and priorities everywhere I decided that this year the only way that I would be able to get workouts in would be to keep them short and increase the intensity. Here were my thoughts on the perfect workout for me.
I am not 20 anymore so I knew that I had to be realistic about my goals
I need a quick workout
I wanted to do my whole body in one day
I wanted to be able to recover from workouts but still be able to do cardio on a lot of the exercise days of the week
My Mini Weight Workout
I ended up coming up with a quick 25 minute workout that would be as hard as I could and feel a little wiped for an hour or so but still have my evenings free to spend with my wife and kids.
So here is what I came up with: Circuit training with weights in about 20 minutes.
Warmup, 5 minutes of cardio, either a bike with some lightweights or the elliptical machine
1. Warmup set of really light bench press, shoulder press, and one armed bent over rows across my bench.
2. A long set of the following
- 10 reps Bench press
- 10 reps each of alternating front laterals (front of shoulders), side laterals (side of shoulders) and bent over rear laterals (back of shoulders)
- 10 reps one armed bent over row across bench for each arm
- 10 bicep curls
- 10 tricep extensions
- 10 squats
- 25 each of crunches and leg lifts
This is one long set that takes about 7 or 8 minutes and each exercise is done to exhaustion. I am really winded at the end and it took a bit to figure out how much each exercise should use so that I was done at 10 reps or so
3. Repeat step two – Maybe twice. This means that I am doing two or three circuits in total
4. Stretch a bit, and I am done
This workout has worked really well for me, it is quick and hits every muscle group, actually each muscle group is really hit hard and I am pretty shaky by the end of the workout.
I do this workout three times a week on alternating days and it does not really cut into my schedule much.
Of course this is only one kind of workout, you would want to change things up exercise and rep-wise and probably change to a longer workout at times during the year to really shock the muscles on a regular basis.
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