15-minute Workouts You Can Do at Home!
When you don’t have time for a long morning run or full strength-training circuit at the gym, you might be tempted to just skip exercise for the day entirely. But you can actually pack a full workout into 15 minutes—including commute time, since they can be performed right in your living room. You just have to be efficient and ready to sweat. Here are three workouts you can crush in 15 minutes, each targeting a different part (or parts) of the body.
Tabata, a form of high-intensity interval training, intertwines spurts of going all-out with rest periods to get your metabolism moving in a short amount of time. This Tabata-inspired workout tones the entire body. It consists of a warm-up and three Tabata sets. The warm-up includes a sequence of high knees, butt kicks, squats, and side lunges, which carry you into the first Tabata set of scissor jumps and burpees. The second set moves you through four-corner jumps and skaters, and the third includes a grueling sequence of jumping jack planks and mountain climbers. See the full video of the workout for specific guidance as you push your body through this challenging sequence of exercises. Expect to be sore the next day—that just means you’re doing it right.
This series of eight exercises blasts flab from your abs in about the same time it takes to stand in line and order your lunchtime burrito. It starts slow with a warm-up pulled from yoga, a flow between Cat and Camel poses, then picks up the pace with a dynamic variation on planking known as Bird-Dog, stability ball crunches, and then some good, old-fashioned planks. Bicycle crunches, side planks, and reverse crunches keep you sweating until it’s time for the cooldown. The cooldown is also ripped straight from a Vinyasa sequence, a moving version of Cobra pose designed to stretch you out and slow down your breath. So even though you’ll probably work up a sweat over the course of this ab-toning routine, you’ll still be calm and ready to return to work by the time you ease out of your final Cobra pose.
If your arms could use a little bit of work before it’s officially tank top season, then use this 15-minute arm-sculpting workout from Women’s Health to tone your biceps. You will need light hand weights to complete it, but cans of beans or other veggies will work in a pinch. Start with a set of standing V raises, in which you simply hold your arms out in front of you in a “V” shape and lift them to chest height, then hold. Then move on to shoulder presses and rotating triceps kickbacks, which are akin to rowing. Work your way through each move until you’ve completed a full round, then take a one-minute break and repeat the entire routine. If you invest just four 15-minute chunks of time to this routine each week, you might notice a change in muscle tone within a few weeks.