For anyone short on time, workouts that can be completed, start to finish, in around 15 minutes are ideal.

This is entirely possible, and long, boring workouts are definitely becoming a thing of the past. People have been advocating interval training for a while now; and now people are coming round to the idea of shorter, higher intensity workouts, we’re seeing new training protocols in gyms and elsewhere.

If you can get as much work done in 15 minutes as most people get done in a full hour in the gym, then who wouldn’t want to train this way?

Especially when you can devise these workouts so that you can even do them AT HOME with minimal equipment! So you’re not only saving time IN the gym, but travelling to and from it too.

Surely then this is ideal for anyone who struggles to find the time to workout, whether it’s down to a busy job, family commitments, the high cost of gym memberships or whatever else tends to get in the way of regular exercise.

By combining the cardiovascular element of training with the resistance element, you’re killing two birds with one stone. Large, full-body exercises that use most, if not all, of the muscles in your body will burn far more calories than your average gym exercise like a bicep curl or triceps push down.

By involving more muscles in each exercise (you’ve got over 600 in your body), your body needs to fuel more muscles. This means more calories are being burned (since it’s the muscles that burn calories – a calorie is a unit of energy).

This means that simply by swapping a chest press for a push-up and involving at least twice as many muscles, you’ll be burning around twice as many calories! So by swapping all of the inefficient exercises for bigger, more challenging exercises, the amount of calories you’ll burn will increase dramatically.

As an added extra to this, muscles need oxygen to produce energy, so by involving more muscles in your exercises, your demand for oxygen also increases, so you\rquote ll be out of breath from doing your resistance work too – what does this mean? It means that you’re getting your cardio work covered at the same time, because if you’re out of breath – IT’S CARDIO!

Now you’re not only burning more calories, but you’re also getting rid of the need to spend hours on a treadmill or bike too. And building your strength-endurance too.
You also need to consider the other benefits of this type of training (yes, there are more!).

Due to the nature of these exercises (large, full body), you are training your muscles to work together to perform a movement, rather than training one small movement at a time. This will lead to easier, more co-ordinated movements, improved balance and stability, and less muscle imbalances (which often lead to pain or injury).

So I urge you to try this type of training for a few weeks and see if you feel the difference. Not only will you have plenty of extra time on your hands, but you should see improvements in fitness, strength, co-ordination and mobility.

Mark Broadbent is a Personal Trainer in Kent, England. Specialising in Weight Loss and Correctional Exercise to help people achieve their health and fitness goals and reduce (or even eradicate) aches and pains that result from muscle imbalances and postural distortion.

12 Days Gift: Fab In 15 Minutes Bonus Workouts

To help get you started with these short, fat-blasting workouts, here are five 15-minute workouts that you can do anywhere with just a pair of light weights. They’ll keep you moving and keep your heart rate up, burning hundreds of calories during AND AFTER the workout! Whether you’re out of shape or fit as a fiddle you’ll find a challenge in these workouts, and can’t fail to see results.

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