One Minute Exercises

“I can do anything for one minute!” This is my motto for working out at home. It’s hard to stay motivated when I’m not at a gym with an instructor or when there are no other people sweating and working out around me. At home, it’s only me. So I need ways to stay enthusiastic and engaged. I have found that short, intense exercises that take strength and focus help me to do that. Hence, the “one minute” motto! Using a little timer set to run back from one minute, I press start and know that, however difficult the exercise is, I only have to do it for 60 seconds.
This mental strategy works for a lot of things, so there is no reason not to use it for exercising as well. We often break down the tasks we are doing into smaller time frames to get through them. I tell my kids to study this way. My husband, James, learned this when he was a law student. He would try to focus on the books for 45 minutes and then take 15 minutes to read the newspaper or get a snack. A short break was all he would need to mentally get ready to study again on the next hour.
When I first started working out doing one-minute exercises, I could not imagine that I would feel tired after only 60 seconds. I was surprised when, for certain exercises, I could barely finish the minute! Because I was coming from a “cardio” approach, I didn’t realize that, when we engage the core and use our own body weight, the heart rate rises, and it is a more intense exercise. By the time I’ve hit 30 minutes on the clock, I’m sweating, and can’t wait for the workout to be over!
The 8-Count Body Builder is one exercise that proves this point every time I do it!