Lori Goldman and Tara Cavanaugh are mothers of small children. Both know that, regardless of the holidays and all they demand, keeping up their exercise routines is important for their health and mental well-being.
“I double up or take what I can get and just accept it,” says Goldman, who works out five days a week while her daughter is in school. “I will intensify my swimming to reduce the time spent in the pool or will do circuit training in the gym, alternating between weights and cardio.”
Cavanaugh normally swims or lifts weights four times a week. Crunch time for her exercise schedule means she’ll take a 20-minute run around the neighborhood instead of going to the fitness center.
It is ironic, but often the very thing that relieves stress and maintains health is the first casualty when the demands of work, celebrations and holiday traditions — like eating and shopping — descend upon us. But even taking 10 minutes for physical activity can benefit you.
Studies have found that with short exercise sessions, it is not the time put into the workout, but the intensity. The Harvard Health Study found that as long as the energy expended is the same, it does not matter if you do two 15-minute sessions or three 10-minute ones — the fitness gains and weight loss will be about the same.
Upping the intensity of your workouts can be a good idea, especially during busy times of the year. There are a number of ways to do that. When strength training, employ the “superset.” A superset involves performing two (or even three) exercises back-to-back without rest, usually (but not always) with opposing muscle groups such as chest/back, quadriceps/hamstrings, and shoulder presses/triceps/biceps.
Intensifying the cardiovascular workout can easily be accomplished in 20 minutes instead of 40 minutes by alternating between a moderate and intense pace, accomplished by either modifying speed or by increasing the incline or resistance. An example would be performing one very intense, high- speed/steep-incline minute every fourth or fifth minute of the workout.
Gregg Reiser, who juggles work in information technology and parenting duties as the father of children ages 4 and 7, has figured out ways to whittle his hour-long workout down to 30 minutes but still keep it productive. “I will combine exercises into more complex moves in order to maximize my time,” Reiser says. Examples include doing shoulder presses with squats or biceps curls with lunges. “I have dumbbells and medicine balls at home and will take resistance bands with me on the road,” Reiser says. “If I only have 10 minutes, I will run stairs, do some crunches and push- ups, or some plyometric moves, like explosive jumping.”
Fitness professionals know that busy clients often need to accomplish more during less available time. Two local trainers, Richard Ruiz and Anne Parker, are among those who have developed classes with that in mind.
Ruiz offers 30-minute sports conditioning sessions at his gym, STAC Fitness Center. These exercise sessions move quickly from lifting, intense aerobics, and explosive moves (called plyometrics) designed to get everything possible out of every one of those 30 minutes. “People looking to get into better condition in shorter periods of time need to perform intervals that are strength-, aerobic- and plyometric-based,” he says. Examples of this kind of training would be maxing out your leg muscles on a leg press, then performing explosive hops across the gym, or, exhausting your upper body on the bench press, then performing a rapid series of push-ups. “You can save time by focusing on the larger muscle groups, allowing the smaller ones to accommodate and support the routine,” Ruiz says.
Personal trainer Parker discovered the TRX Suspension Training System last year at a fitness symposium and never looked back. TRX has two strong straps with handles that can hook to a sturdy piece of gym equipment or be held in place over a closed door. By holding onto the handles and using your own body weight as resistance, every area of the body can be exercised, especially the core muscles. One of the selling points for the TRX is that you can get a complete 30-minute circuit-training workout wherever you are: gym, home or office.
“Suspension training utilizes your own body weight as resistance, which makes for an amazing workout,” Parker says. “Everybody is busy and needs to maximize their training time, and using a TRX is a great way to stay on track.”
Linda J. Buch is a certified fitness trainer in Denver; linda@ljbalance.com.
