Three Ways to Be Fit in 15 Minutes:

 

1- Dr. Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, has found in his research that those over age 50 have better results and are more likely to continue exercising when doing 15-20 min workouts. This led him to devise a simple workout to match: Do one set each (8-12 repetitions) of the following eight exercises, with a one-minute rest break between each one.

 

2- Lou Schuler, author of The New Rules of Lifting, gets the most bangs out of his short workouts by doing circuits. To do a circuit, you do two or three sets of three different exercises. Then, take a short break and repeat the circuit. Schuler recommends first warming up for five minutes with lunges, squats or push-ups. Then do circuits that each include one upper-body pushing exercise, one upper body pulling exercise and one lower body exercise. Upper body pushing exercises include pushups, bench presses or shoulder presses. Upper body pulling exercises include rows, chin ups or lat pull downs. Finally, good lower body exercises include squats, dead lifts, lunges or step ups.

 

3- One way to reduce the length of your workout is to reduce the number or repetitions, says Jorge Cruise, a weight loss coach and author of The 12 Second Sequence. Instead of doing 8-12 reps quickly, Cruise recommends taking longer to perform each individual repetition. Do this, he says, and you can get better results by only doing 4 reps. For example, a common lunge, where you bend your knee as you drop your back leg toward the ground behind you, can be modified by taking a full 10 seconds to perform each lunge, and then holding the lunge position for 2 seconds before coming back up. Perform crunches the same way, take longer to come up, pause at the top and then come slowly back down.