As we’ve seen, one of the best things you can do to increase your energy levels is to work out. The only problem? It takes energy to work out and it takes time. This creates something of a vicious circle: you’re lethargic because you aren’t active and you aren’t active because you’re lethargic!
But instead of trying to rectify this with a massive training regime that takes up hours of every week, why not instead try introducing exercise more slowly into your daily life?
How to Work Out in Ten Minutes
The great thing is that you can actually get some quite impressive results using exercise that lasts only 10 minutes. In fact, in terms of energy production, training for 10 minutes at a time may in fact be one of the very methods if you use something called HIIT.
And if you do this first thing in the morning before your shower (after you’ve had time to wake up though), then you won’t have any ‘extra’ time taken up by washing or by having to commute to and from a gym.
So what is HIIT? HIIT stands for ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ and this basically means that you are going to alternate between periods of intensive activity and periods of light activity. So for example, you might run at 90% of your maximum heartrate for 1 minute and then jog very lightly around 50%MHR for 2 minutes and repeat.
This actually allows you just enough time to recover before you go flat out again and overall, you’ll find you actually end up training harder and more intensively than if you had just trained at 70% the whole time.
What’s more, is that going into 90% pushes you into an anaerobic state. This means that the body is now demanding more energy than the aerobic system (oxygen) can deliver. Thus the body has to look to other areas in order to get the energy it needs – which means it starts using up all the glucose in the blood and which means the mitochondria have to work more efficiently.
And as an added bonus, HIIT leads to something called the ‘after burn’ effect. This means that your body continues to burn calories throughout the day because you have used up all the available blood sugar and it now needs to look to fat stores in order to continue powering your movement.
In just 10 minutes a day, this type of training can help you to burn more fat and it increases both the quantity and efficiency of your mitochondria helping to give you the energy levels of a young, hyperactive child (theoretically at least!).
One form of HIIT actually takes only 4 minutes in total. This is called ‘tabata’ and it basically involves going flat out at 90%MHR for 10 seconds, resting or engaging in ‘active recovery’ (such as plank or walking) for 20 seconds and then repeating. You do this for a total of 4 minutes (so 8 circuits) and you can use any kind of exercise from kettlebell swings, to push ups, to running, to skipping rope – as long as you are going at 90% or above.
This might sound very easy but by the end of this short session your heart rate will be through the roof and you’ll be surprised just how many calories you can burn this way!
Bodyweight Workouts
Another option is to use a resistance workout and form a circuit with it. For example, you might do 25 push ups, followed by 10 pull ups, followed by 10 jump squats, followed by 20 sit ups and do 2-3 rounds in total with no breaks in between.
This is a light aerobic workout but actually it’s something that won’t cause you to sweat too much. That in turn means you can use this anywhere and at any time – even just before work or during your lunch break! And you’d be surprised what amazing effects just a little resistance work for your muscles can have on your energy, your power and your weight loss!
Incidental Training
If you think about the way we would have exercised or trained in the wild, then of course that wouldn’t have involved being largely motionless for most of the day, only to then workout intensively for one hour before returning to inactivity!
Rather, we would have been constantly staying active, constantly moving around and constantly facing new challenges. This is how our bodies are supposed to be used and if you really want to get the best performance out of yourself, this is how you need to act as well!
Incidental training just means turning regular activities into training opportunities. So if you’re waiting somewhere at a curb, why not use that curb to do some calf raises? If you need to head to the shops, why not jog rather than walking? And if you are carrying bags, why not shrug them?
This also means making smart decisions by taking the stairs instead of the lift, or walking from the bus stop before your own. These changes might seem like they cost energy in the short run but in the long term they will make you more efficient and give you more time and enthusiasm for the things you want to do!
