Is a 5 Minute Workout Good For You?

If you’ve been wondering why a 5 minute workout can help you get in shape?  I recently did a podcast with Annie Jennings discussing how you can get a great workout in 5 Minutes with My WorkHorse…aka…the Portable Pull-up Bar.

Click to listen to the Podcast

Here are three quick reasons why a short, burst workout may be what you are after.
1.  It’s Short  It can be as short as 5-20 minutes, three times a week.  Who doesn’t have time for that?

2.  It’s Not Exhausting!  So many people I consult with are over-training or over-working and already exhausted body.  Instead of whipping an exhausted body for 45-60 minutes…a 5-15 minutes burst workout will give you the ‘fitness hit’ you want, but won’t be over-taxing on your body (adrenal glands).  This is a common problem!

Remember, exercise is a form of stress and the more stress (long hard workouts) you place on the body the more exhausting and depleting it is on your body.  If you think you could be training an already exhausted body, you need to test your adrenals and see if that is the real cause to your sticking point.

3.  Spike your testosterone (TT) and growth hormone (GH).  These two hormones will kick-up your metabolism and help your body burn fat and add lean muscle.  The more intense the workout – the greater the surge in TT and GH.  As much as I love aerobic, cardiovascular training…it’s only so intense and doesn’t kick-up your TT and GH as much as a short, high intensity interval workout does.

You can make your short workout with weights, body weight exercises, even interval running or biking.  If you choose weights or body weight exercises, I recommend compound movements such as push-ups, pull-ups or inverted pull-ups if you can’t do pull-ups, squats, jumps, lunges….any type of movement except isolation exercises such as bicep curls.  

The key is to push yourself and really stress your body in those 5-15 minutes, so much so that you are happy you have to stop.  If you feel like you can still keep training after those 5-15 minutes….you didn’t push your body hard enough to really spike your testosterone and growth hormone as much as you could.

I hope this helps, and you like the podcast and will come back for more information on how to train and diet smarter – not harder or longer.

It’s All About Eating Right and Training Smarter – For Your Body!