The 7-Minute Workout

For all of you who don’t like to exercise or say, “I don’t have time,” The American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal¹ reports how you can fulfill the requirements for a high intensity (HIIT) exercise using nothing more than your own body weight, a chair, and a wall.

Best of all, this science-backed routine only requires 7- minutes, as the program calls for 10- to 15-seconds of rest between each 30-second exercise, which should be performed in rapid succession.

As reported by the New York Times:

“’There’s very good evidence that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,’ says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the article.”

The health benefits of high intensity interval training are well-established at this point, and include:

-Significantly improving your insulin sensitivity, especially if you’re on a low-processed food-, low-sugar/low-grain diet.

– Virtually eliminating type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

-Optimizing your cholesterol ratios, when combined with a proper diet.

– Naturally boosting your levels of human growth hormone (HGH).

– Boosting fat metabolism and optimizing your body fat percentage (as a result of improved conservation of sugar and glycogen in your muscles).

– Increasing your aerobic capacity.

When done at the appropriate intensity, the featured 12 exercises (seen in the photo) equate to doing a long run and a weight-training session.

When I do “HIIT” workouts I usually do 5 exercises, a minute each and I do them four times each, resting only one minute after each set of the 5 exercises. This only takes 24 minutes. Here’s one of my sequences: sit-ups, squats, knee-highs, push-ups (I start w/ regular then go to my knees), jumping jacks or jump rope, X 4.