Firm and burn in 12 minutes a day

It’s not about what you do but how you do it…

For any of us over 50 that’s never been truer. We’re busier, we’ve got more hormones going haywire and we feel this sense of urgency about improving our physical fitness — and physical health — not getting any easier to effect as we get older.

If you’re feeling there is no time like the present, you have an arsenal of secret weapons to help you get better results. More and more research is being done not just on best practices for exercise but with mid-lifers as subjects — that’s us!

Here’s one such secret weapon…

This protocol takes exercises that you’re probably doing already and simply sequences them in a way that will give you better results in less time.

Three to four minutes rest between exercising the same muscle group will allow you optimal recovery so that you can recruit more muscle fibers and use them effectively. In the demonstration provided, if each exercise is done for a minute, which would allow 10 repetitions that take 6 seconds each, then there will be three minutes rest before you get back to the same muscle group.

• Bent over row
• Squats
• Chest Press
• Core Exercise (plank was demonstrated)

For beginners, especially, this rest between exercises for the same muscle groups can be not only effective, but your perception of the work may be lower. You’ll be more likely to want to repeat it if you feel successful.

Beyond that, by exercising this way you’ll see and feel more results quickly which is usually a big boost in motivation to stick with it.

There’s one more incentive to this type of exercise. If you rotate through this sequence two or three times, each exercise requiring a minute, you’ve still used all major muscle groups in eight or 12 minutes.

Could you expand the list of exercises? Yes. Could you perform this set and then do another using the same or different muscle groups for an expanded workout? Yes. You have options. Start with a set of exercise you’re familiar with and expand from there.

And you didn’t think you had time to exercise.