Finding the time to squeeze all four types of exercise—endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance—into your week can feel like a Herculean task. The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise, with a suggested goal of 30 minutes a day, five times a week. But that’s just endurance. You still need to budget time for the other three types, along with work, family, friends, and, occasionally, sleep. What you need is a workout plan that delivers maximum benefits in minimum time.
While there are only so many ways to cut down on endurance training while reaping the benefits, you can knock out an effective strength session in as little as 15 minutes. To help you through the process, celebrity fitness experts Jay Cardiello and Basheerah Ahmad have created 15-minute TRX workout plans for strength that you can do at home with your TRX Suspension Trainer. Each of the workouts targets a specific muscle group through two rounds of five moves performed for 60 seconds each with a 30 second break in between. (The total time, with breaks, comes to 15 minutes.)
For an upper body workout, Jay recommends a sequence of TRX exercises that include chest presses, low rows, squat rows, bicep curls, and tricep presses. His 15-minute TRX workout plan for core includes a series of TRX side planks, body saws, pikes, mountain climbers, and hip abductions.
For lower body work, Basheerah has you covered with five straightforward moves. Start with TRX hamstring curls, followed by hip presses, squats, mountain climbers, and lunges. (Yes, mountain climbers work both your core and your lower body!)
The next piece of your workout regimen is stability, but this one is easy to combine into your lower body workout. In stability work, you should focus on exercises that require you to stand on one foot. For example, you could try a TRX single leg squat to single leg balance reach progression, or a TRX crossing balance lunge to step side lunge combo. If you have time to stretch your 15-minute workout into a 20-minute workout, you can tack both of these onto the end of your leg workout. You can also try our ready-made TRX workout, which only takes 25 minutes of your time.
Now that you’ve got strength and balance out of the way, it’s time to think about flexibility. This one’s important because it improves your overall physical performance and helps you avoid injuries. While stretching after a workout will improve flexibility, it’s a reactive approach to training. You should also add a proactive approach, like yoga or the TRX Essentials: Flexibility video. In the video, TRX Director of Training and Development Fraser Quelch takes you through a 50-minute, real-time stretching routine designed to counteract the effects of daily life, and helps you understand what and why you’re stretching.
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