Fitness Friday: Quickies

There are some days (weeks, months, seasons of life . . .) where an hour-long workout just isn't feasible. But that doesn't mean you have to give up altogther!  This week was one of those weeks in our house: got pink eye (me), night wakings (Moose), early morning meeting (me).

It is so easy to give in and give up.  That's why it is important to have some quickie workouts in your exercise arsenal for those times. These aren't workouts that are going to get you "bikini ready" or magically produce a six pack.  But ten or twenty minutes of movement to maintain the hard work you've been doing and give your mood a boost still has value!

So, how to build this arsenal?

Invest in some short (or shorten-able) exercise videos. I'm a self-confessed vidiot (that'd be exercise video junkie), so I turn to some of the workouts in my collection that fit the bill purely from a length perspective.  This week, for example, I pulled out a cardio workout called FIRM: Calorie Explosion that let me select a 19 minute workout of athletic-conditioning-based drills.

I've had to learn, too, that just because a workout is 50 minutes in length, doesn't mean I have to do the whole thing (I realize this is a "duh" for a lot of people, but I'm a mega rule-follower, so this was hard for me).  Workouts divided into "circuits" (a set of exercises - either cardio, weights, or both - done several times through before a new set is introduced) are great for modifying length.  Jillian Michaels: Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism is a great cardio circuit workout I can shorten even when I want some serious cardio.  When I am more in the mood for a fun, dancy workout, Petra Kolber's Bootcamp Boogie is easy to break down into bite-size pieces.

But don't think for a minute that you have to splash a lot of cash to get some quality, shorter workouts.  There are a TON of great, short workouts available for {free} from both blossoming and seasoned exercise instructors. 

This eight-minute "Pick-Me-Up Quickie Workout" from Cassey Ho at Blogilates is my very favorite pinch hit!



The Jillian Michaels workout I mentioned above is also available for {free} in Circuit segments on the video producers' YouTube channel. 



Where do you turn when you only have a few minutes for exercise?  What's your favorite quickie workout? 

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