Introduce a quick workout into your daily routine
Get results for less than 15 minutes a day!
Can you spend 15 minutes or less every day to get fit? After the science-heavy posts that probably debunked some of your established ideas about food and nutrition, let’s talk some more about your fitness. It’s really not that hard to squeeze a workout into your day.
Hopefully, by now you’ve started walking 10,000 steps every day as outlined in one of our previous post. If not, take a look at how easy it is.
While walking is great for your cardiovascular system, you’re going to need something more to improve your muscles. Exercise doesn’t require slogging for an hour in the gym. Here are two simple workouts that have proven to work for thousands, if not millions of people worldwide. These take under 15 minutes and need to be performed daily.
The 7 minute workout
In May 2013, The New York Times published a story that outlined a scientific 7 minute work out consisting of just 12 simple exercises that do not require any equipment other than a sturdy chair and a wall. Since then, millions of people have benefited from this routine.
The 7 minute workout was also featured by the American College of Sports Medicine in its Health and Fitness Journal. This is a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that has been proven to work for improving fitness in significantly lesser time than a regular workout. This workout is by no means easy. Each burst of workout is followed by a 10 second rest to allow your muscles to relax. After 7 minutes of simple but gruelling exercises, you should be done with it for the day.
There are quite a few apps for Android and iOS to help you with achieving the 7 minute exercise goal. Look for one that also integrates with Google Fit or Apple Health, so you’ll have a single place to see your exercise history. If all you need is a video to guide you through the workout, here’s one:
As always, if you are unsure of the state of your health, our recommendation is to check with your doctor first.
5BX — 11 minutes to a fitter you
In the 1950s, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) tasked Bill Orban to develop a fitness program for their pilots, one third of whom were not considered fit to fly at that time. It was called the 5BX (5 basic exercises). As the program was only targeted at men, they later developed a similar program called XBX (10 basic exercises) for women. 5BX was designed for pilots located in remote bases with no access to gym facilities. The program was initially criticised, but proved its worth in three years of testing. It was discontinued by the RCAF in 2008 due to the risk of injury from unsupervised exercise, but safer variants have been developed by others.
5BX consists of five exercises that will take you 11 minutes to perform. 5BX consists of 6 charts that adjust the exercises based on age, to accommodate various age groups. Unlike the 7 minute workout, this does not even need a chair or wall.
The exercises remain the same in the 6 charts, but the intensity and variations ensure that it becomes more challenging as you get fitter. The five exercises in 5BX:
- Stretching
- Sit-up
- Back extension
- Push-up
- Running in place
The last step can be replaced by a walk or run. You’ve been introduced to The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker in a previous post. That book also contains a modified version of 5BX that Walker believes is safer for the average person. The original 5BX pamphlet from RCAF is available online.
There are quite a few websites that help you get started with 5BX. Here’s one called Fit 450 that is easy and simple. A simple search on YouTube yields a lot of results for 5BX. The app market for 5BX is not very attractive, probably because the exercises themselves are very simple and open sourced by RCAF when they released it to the general public. But the websites and videos should help plenty.
Tell us what you think about these two simple workout routines and your success with them.
Looking forward to a fitter you!
(Thanks to Kiran Jonnalagadda for editing this article.)
Kilter is HasGeek’s humble attempt to provide a space for reasoned debate on how your body actually works, and how you can find your own path to good health via better nutrition, fitness and habits.
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