A 25 Minute Workout

This workout consists of five phases, each of which will take approximately five minutes to complete. Use this workout five days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday and Sunday are free days, but you can do additional cardio on one of those two days; this can be any form of cardiovascular exercise for 15 to 30 minutes in length or a recreational activity you may enjoy or you can give your body better recovery.

First 5 minutes

Cardio warm-up (75 CAL)

Do some form of cardio exercise for five minutes, gradually increasing your speed and resistance level. A good warm-up is far more effective for injury prevention than stretching. The intensity of your warm-up cardio session should be moderate to low at first. After a couple of minutes, increase the intensity slightly by either going faster or increasing the resistance level. This may require you to walk, cycle, or step faster. Or you can increase the incline on the treadmill or raise the resistance level on the stationary bike.

The second purpose of your warm-up is to get your heart in the fat-burning zone, which is 65 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Your warm- up should be challenging enough that by the end you are in your target heart rate zone.

To calculate your zone, use the following formula:

(220 - age) * (0.65 to 0.85) = target heart rate zone (bpm)

To find out your heart rate get a digital clock, then use your first two fingers to gently press on your radial artery, which located just above your palm in a straight line down from your thumb. Once you have found pulse site, count how many beats there are in fifteen seconds. Multiply this number by four, and you have your heart rate.

The chart below shows you where you want your heart rate to be when you do cardiovascular exercise:

Age               Fat-Burning Zone (in beats per minute)

20                 130–170

25                 127–166

30                 124–162

35                 120–157

40                 117–153

45                 114–149

50                 111–145

55                 107–140

60                 104–136

65                 101–132

70                 98–128

75                 94–123

80                 91–119

By elevating your heart rate at the beginning of your workout, you will stay in the fat-burning mode throughout the strength and core component of the workout.

Minutes 5:00–14:59

2 and 3: strength training

For these two phases in each workout, there are two exercises, each working a different muscle group. Do them in the order suggested, and do the second exercise immediately after completing the set of the first exercise, which is called a superset. Then rest the suggested length before beginning the next superset.

During minutes 5:00 through 14:59, your week looks like this:

Level 1 strength training

Recommended for relative newcomers to strength training

Preparation Week:

2 sets of 15 reps of each exercise, with 90 seconds rest after doing the superset of 2 exercises back-to-back

Week 1:

2 sets of 25 reps of each exercise, with 80 seconds rest after each superset

Week 2:

3 sets of 20 reps of each exercise, with 70 seconds rest after each superset

Week 3:

3 sets of 15 reps of each exercise, with 60 seconds rest after each superset

Week 4:

4 sets of 12 reps of each exercise, with 50 seconds rest after each superset

Week 5:

4 sets of 10 reps of each exercise, with 40 seconds rest after each superset

Level 2 strength training

For advanced exercisers, or after you’ve successfully completed five weeks of Level I

Week 1:

3 sets of 30 reps, with 90 seconds rest after each superset

Week 2:

3 sets of 25 reps, with 70 seconds rest after each superset

Week 3:

4 sets of 20 reps, with 50 seconds rest after each superset

Week 4:

4 sets of 15 reps, with 40 seconds rest after each superset

Week 5:

5 sets of 10 reps, with 30 seconds rest after each superset

Minutes 15:00–19:59

4: Core exercises

The core is the most important muscle group (i.e., the obliques, transverse abdominis, and rectus abdominis), since it provides the foundation for all movements; everything from normal daily movements like getting out of bed or picking the paper up off the driveway to almost any physical activity that involves throwing or swinging. It also serves to hold in our organs and stand upright with good posture. The upper body meets the lower body in the core, in which we are able to move in three planes.

During minutes 15:00 through 19:59, your week looks like this:

Core exercise Level I

Preparation Week:

3 sets of 10 reps, with 30 seconds of rest after each set

Week 1:

4 sets of 10 reps, with 15 seconds of rest after each set

Week 2:

4 sets of 12 reps, with 20 seconds of rest after each set

Week 3:

3 sets of 15 reps, with 25 seconds of rest after each set

Week 4:

3 sets of 20 reps, with 30 seconds of rest after each set

Week 5:

2 sets of 25 reps, with 35 seconds of rest after each set

Minutes 20–24:59

5: Cardio

Perhaps unlike the first five minutes, your body will welcome the natural, steady cardio rhythm at this point in the workout.

The goal of this final workout phase is twofold. First, we are actually trying to get your heart rate back up into the target heart rate zone. While it’s important to increase the level of difficulty (speed and/or incline) as you become more fit and to vary the kind of cardio you do for a different mental stimulus (and to avoid repetitive stress injuries, especially if you’re a runner), arriving at the fat-burn zone is most important. This contributes to the overall fat-burning effect of the workout.

Second, we finish the workout with cardio to enhance recovery and to “cool-down” the body. Acute recovery from the resistance training occurs immediately. During the cardio phase lactic acid and carbon dioxide are flushed from the body following their production and accumulation, and nutrient-rich blood is produced to help your muscles recover and rebuild. The cool-down also fully loosens otherwise tight muscles and decreases something called delayed onset muscle soreness.

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