Ask the Trainer: 10 Minutes 3x a Day or 30 Minutes, What's More Effective?

I thought this was an excellent question! Yes, 10 minutes three times a day can be just effective as 30 minutes!

But you have to make it work, no time for lolly-gagging. If that’s all the time you have, you better MAKE IT WORK! Calories burned is calories burned, right? And if you burn 300 calories walking/jogging on the treadmill, then walking/jogging 10 minutes 3 times a day, should get you a near equal (if not higher) calorie burn.

How is that possible? For me, if I only had 10 minutes, I would go all out, full force and jog for 10 minutes, versus for me (and with many others) jogging for 30 minutes straight is tough and not doable.

So with a 1-2 minute warm-up, I would follow that with a 8 minutes straight jog as fast as my little legs could go, then cool down for one minute, and make sure I get a couple of stretches in. Maybe I do 10 in the morning, 10 in the afternoon, and 10 at night. That’s my MINIMUM of 30 minutes of cardio I suggests everyone does daily.

Here are a couple of other 10 minute workouts you can scatter through-out the day:

• Stationary bike, mine is in my living room, so I can do 10 minutes at a time while watching TV
• Treadmill walk/jog. Start off slow, but then continue to increase your speed every minute going as fast as you can go. For the last minute, go back to a moderate pace.
• Dancing, cut on some music and dance like a rock star for 10 minutes
• Turbo Kick/Fire has a few short videos
• Hip Hop Abs has an awesome 5-minute workout, make sure and do a 2 minute warm-up and 3 minute cool down, even if it’s just walking in place.
• Tae Bo has an 8 minute workout
• Walk stairs! I worked on the 16th floor once, and on breaks, we would go down and up…sometime this took longer than 10 minutes, but whew, this is a workout!
• Create a 10-minute bootcamp style workout, running, jumping jacks, burpees, lunges, squats, shadow boxing, whatever you like.
• Jump rope. This is a tough one, but do three 3-minute increments, and in between do 25 push ups. You will feel the BURN!
• Strength training can be done in 10 minutes too! Do push-ups, lunges and reverse crunches for 30 seconds each. Repeat this sequence for 10 minutes. Alternatively, perform triceps push-ups, body weight squats and Russian twists for 30 seconds each. Repeat this sequence for 10 minutes.