Change your life in 20 minutes with a quick and easy gym visit

The average time spent per day on social media has increased to 147 minutes per day! The number one excuse or deterrent most people have when it comes to health and exercise is time. Something doesn’t add up here?

This narrative is an easy excuse for the mind to follow, it takes the blame away from the individual and puts it on factors out of their control such as work, family, social schedule. But really, subconsciously what the individual is saying is that they don’t value their health as a top priority as everything is working fine. In the same way a car needs cleaning, servicing, and driving, the body needs the correct fuel, consistent movement, and a tune up very so often. Unfortunately people only realise things are broken once something goes wrong.

Everybody is going to experience and issue with their health at some point in their life, and once it becomes serious enough people think it’s time to act. And magically just like that people have time and motivation for the health of their body. Why wait until a problem arises that may or may not be fixable when we can devote as little as 20m 2-3 per week and start improving your bodies function and significantly reducing the risk of disease and injury. Don’t forget the added benefit of feeling great, reducing anxiety, and dropping some body fat.

Now, without a doubt people can be intimidated going to the gym, but these days most commercial gyms are not full of juiced up body builders and are just your average person trying to improve their strength and fitness or tone up. So now you’ve built up the courage to go into the gym (or workout from home) how to we go about working out in as little as 20m.

The average program posted online is more targeted to towards intermediate and advanced lifters. And has far too many exercises in it to be time efficient. If you are a novice and just want the bare minimum to improve (over a longer period of time) a workout can include the full body in as little as 4 exercises. One push exercise for legs and upper body and one pull exercise for legs and upper body. For example a basic training protocol:

	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Tempo	Rest
A1	Leg Press	3	15-20	2010	10s
A2	NG Pulldown	3	15-20	2011	60s
B1	Lying Hamstring Curls	3	15-20	2010	10s
B2	Seated Chest Press	3	15-20	2010	60s

So each set should take between 60-70s and there are 12 sets.

Total work time = 12 - 14 minutes

Total rest time = 7 minutes

Total time = 25 total minutes with warm up

So as you can see a workout can become very efficient. If you don’t have time to go to the gym why not workout at home. Without use of actual weights to provide stimulus for muscle growth and opportunity to increase the resistance each session, your results may not be as formidable as going to the gym, but doing something will still greatly benefit your health in the long run.

	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Tempo	Rest
A1	Step Ups or Squats	3	20-25	2010	30s
A2	Thera band pull aparts	3	20-25	2011	30s
B1	Glut Bridge	3	20-25	2011	30s
B2	Scapula push ups off wall/floor	3	20-25	1011	30s

Now this workout is more for mobility and getting each of your main joints and muscle groups moving. Sitting down all day will cause a tightening of the hip flexors and flexion of the thoracic spine and shoulders so we need to get these areas open and mobile. The gym will provide a greater benefits in the long term but if you lack the motivation to start this is a great way to get your body feeling younger and stronger again.

Both of these workouts will be performed in under 20 minutes once you learn the movements and the set ups for each. Take time out of the equation and start burning more belly fat and strengthening and maintaining your lean muscle mass well into your retirement. What are you waiting for!?