Happy Sunday! Spoiler alert, the answer to the question of this blog post is a definite “yes”. 5-10 minute high intensity workouts can and do work.
I’ve always been either the skinny kid or the fat kid throughout my life until my wife stumbled upon Mark Sisson of www.MarksDailyApple.com and we tried the 21 day total body transformation back in 2014. With some understanding of nutrition and movement, I went from a reasonable weight, to a bit skinny as fat stripped off my body and then towards muscular as my body easily adapted to my new healthy lifestyle. I did that specifically by eating primally and doing the following movement plan:
Daily Walks – EVERY DAY, non-negotiable
- 6-8 sessions of 5-10 minute walks getting 500-1000 steps per session and at about/at least 1 hour in between walks. These walks are easy moderate paced walks for me. I’m not looking for a workout here, just movement.
- 1 session of walking at least 3,000 steps in 30 minutes or less. This may be a bit more of a challenge physically because of the 30 minute duration, but isn’t meant to overly stress the body in any way.
- Making sure that my total steps are 10,000 or more EVERY day.
Working out
- 1-3x per week 5 7 minute Primary Equivalency Movement Workout (PEM). PEM consists of body weight squats, pushups, pullups, and planking. The goal for males is 50 squats, 50 pushups, 12 pullups, and 2 minutes of planking. Yes, I sometimes only did 1 workout per week and continued to get results. Rest and a good attitude were HUGE in this whole process.
- 1-2x per month: 10-15 minute Sprint Session consisting of 4-6 sprints lasting a maximum of 30 seconds per sprint with ample time in between to fully recover. Sprinting time is OVER on the sprint that I am unable to maintain full speed with the same effort as the last sprint. The days that I sprint are the days I’m feeling absolutely AWESOME and I ALWAYS get at least 1 week of rest in between Sprints!
That’s it, that got me into awesome shape and feeling great! 🙂
Next level for me, gaining muscle mass
Now, I’ve decided to put on more muscle, so while I’m currently not ready to release my diet options on this one, I can tell you that I have changed my above working out by adding 1-3x per day 5 minute heavy and intense lifting sessions training a different body part each time. Along with some eating changes which I’m still tweaking, this has given me positive muscle gain of about 10 lbs. and added 10-25% to all of my lifts over the last month I’ve been doing it.
That’s it for now. Thank you for reading. Make it a magnificent week. If you have an idea for an article or want to engage my consulting or research services, please contact me.
Wishing you happiness, health, and success!
-Gregg
