Workouts for Busy People

By Mike Geary
Founder, TruthAboutAbs.com

Before begin, a quick heads up: this style of workout is far different than anything you've ever tried before and may result in a dramatically leaner, stronger body so that in a few weeks your friends will no longer recognize you.

Okay, I exaggerated about your friends recognizing you, but this workout is still great for busy people.

Here's how it works:

Instead of doing your traditional workouts of hitting the gym 3-4 times a week and doing your normal weight training and cardio routines for an hour, with this program, you will be working out for just a couple minutes at a time, several times throughout each day, 5 days a week.

The program will consist of only bodyweight exercises done for about 2-3 minutes, 6-8 times per day, throughout each day. If you work a normal office job, you are going to have to not be shy about doing a few exercises in your office and having your cube-mates watch you.

If you have a private office, then you don't have to worry about anybody watching you. If you work from home, or are a stay at home mom, there's no reason you can't fit these in throughout the day while at home. If you end up having a busy day with meetings and so forth, and can only fit a couple of these 2-minute workouts in, then so be it, but try to get as many done each day as you can.

If you're on a normal 9-5 office schedule, I recommend doing your 2-minute workouts every hour, on the hour, with the exception of lunch. For example, you could try 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 PM, 3 PM, and 4 PM

Some of the exercises that are the best to focus on are:

* up & down a staircase if one is available
* floor planks (holding plank position from forearms and feet)
* floor abs exercises such as lying leg thrusts, ab bicycles, etc.
* bodyweight squats (and variations)
* pushups (and variations)
* forward, reverse, or walking lunges
* one-legged bodyweight Romanian deadlifts

This list is not fully comprehensive, but I wanted to keep it relatively simple. If you know other good bodyweight exercises, you can also add those to your routine. If you want to keep it real simple and don't want to get down on the floor for anything, you can stick to squats, lunges, and pushups and still get great results.

The good thing about these workouts is that you do enough in 2-3 minutes to get your blood pumping, heart rate up a bit, a large portion of your body's muscles worked, and body temperature raised. However, it's usually not enough to break a sweat in only 2 or 3 minutes, so you don't have to worry about sweating in the office or where ever you may be. At most, you might just get a little moist on the skin.

Here's an example routine (adjust the reps up or down based on your capabilities):

Tues/Thurs
9 am - 6 fwd lunges each leg/6 rev lunges, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am - one legged bw Romanian deadlifts (RDL) 6 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat 1X for 2 sets
11 am - 3 fwd lunges each leg/3 rev lunges, repeat for 4 sets
1 PM - one legged bw RDL 3 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat for 4 sets
2 PM - 5 fwd lunges each leg/5 rev lunges, repeat for 3 sets
3 PM - one legged bw RDL 10 each leg/floor abs for 30 sec (no repeat)
4 PM - max fwd lunges each leg/max rev lunges in one set (no repeat)

Mon/Wed/Fri
9 am - 10 pushups/15 bodyweight squats, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am - plank holds (hold the planks as long as you can taking short rest breaks for a total of 3 minutes)
11 am - 5 pushups/10 bodyweight squats, repeat for 4 sets
1 PM - plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
2 PM - 8 pushups/12 bodyweight squats, repeat for 3 sets
3 PM - plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
4 PM - max pushups/max bodyweight squats in one set (no repeat)

In order to progress on these workouts, you could either add 1 or 2 reps to each set per week, or you could progress to more difficult versions of each exercise each week (for example, close grip pushups, one leg raised pushups, squats with arms raised straight over head, etc.).

The routines above are just a couple examples of how you can use this unique style of training. Use your creativity and come up with your own.

Even though each "mini" workout was a very short duration, you've accumulated lots of repetitions for almost every muscle throughout your entire body, and you didn't even have to break a sweat during any of the "mini" workouts. And there's hardly any excuse for not being able to take a 2-minute break once per hour and do a couple of exercises.

Another benefit of this style of training is that now you don't have to devote any time before or after work to going to the gym. You've now got some extra free time on your hands!

Keep in mind that you will hit a plateau on any given training method, so I'd recommend just rotating it into your arsenal of various training methods.

If you liked these training ideas, my internationally popular ebook The Truth about Six Pack Abs contains tons of innovative training ideas to lose stubborn body fat and carve out a rock hard set of abs.

Chet's Note: Bodyweight training is a great way to break up the routine and also to help busy people exercise who thought they could never begin. If you're too busy but want to get fit, check out Mike's website to buy his Truth About Six Pack Abs Program.