A 6-Minute Workout for When You’re Short on Time

Working out never has to be an all day event. It doesn’t even require an hour in the gym every day.

Many of my clients spend around 30 minutes just 3 times a week exercising, but even that doesn’t have to be your minimum.

If other priorities seem to constantly get in the way, there are strategies you can use to make the most of your limited time. I’ll go over 3 of them for you (to keep it brief) and then I’ll give you a freebie workout you can do at home with no equipment whenever you have 6 minutes to spare.

3 Quick Short-Workout Strategies

1. Pick Your Poison

You won’t have time to work on strength, cardio, flexibility, balance, and your juggling skills in a short workout session. Pick the one thing that needs the most work (this is often the thing you would rather not do at all) and work on that.

2. Supersets and Circuits

You can always pick just two exercises, do them back to back for a few sets (these are called supersets), then call it a day.

Or if you have a little more time than that, pick 4-6 exercises and do them as a circuit. That’s where you cycle through each exercise one at a time, then repeat them all for a predetermined total number of sets, reps, or length of time.

3. Divide the Day

If you’re always short on time, you might be best served doing 5-10 minutes of exercise whenever you get the chance.

My suggestion for this is to have a list of exercises to pull from and cycle through that list whenever the opportunity arises. You could even have a full workout program that you segment throughout your day.

Your 6-Minute Workout

I call this the “Workout and a Half in Half the Time,” ummm… workout.

Or just the “1.5 Workout.” (Let’s stick with that one.)

You have four exercises, each one will be performed for one and a half minutes (making the workout exactly 6 minutes long). I’ll give you instructions in the video below on how to do the exercises, but here’s what you need to know:

If possible, you’ll perform each exercise without stopping for its allotted 1.5 minutes. If that’s NOT possible (and it probably won’t be for all of them), you can take as many breaks as you need, but keep the timer running, with the ultimate goal being to get as many reps done as you can in that minute and a half.

No matter how many reps you’ve done, when the minute and a half is up, you move on to the next exercise.

Here’s how it looks written out:

1.5 minutes of 1.5 Squats

1.5 minutes of 1.5 Push-Ups (or 1.5 hand-elevated push-ups)

1.5 minutes of 1.5 Side Plank Leg Raises (45 seconds per leg)

1.5 minutes of 1.5 Breath Deadbugs

It’s pretty simple, but it won’t be easy. Watch the video to learn the exercises and then you can even follow along as I do it so you don’t have to set your own timer.

By the way, if you find this type of thing helpful, one of the best ways you can show your appreciation is by signing up for our email list where we send out diet and exercise tips every week. Sign up here.

Now here’s the workout video…