Short on time? Get results in under an hour!

Swissball for circuit moves

Need to be in and out of the gym in under an hour? I hope so! Unless you're taking extra time to stretch, there's every chance you're not spending your time as effectively as you could be.
Nat had 40 minutes this morning due to limited creche hours for her little one and I had the same - dental appointment (ugh.)
So we started with the sweat-inducing circuit for 20 minutes and finished with 20 minutes on the summit (climbing) machine. Here's how you can do it:

Renegade row

• Make a plan - spending time thinking about what on earth to do is WASTING time!
• Try to keep your circuit to a small area so that you don't waste time looking for equipment and waiting for others to finish
• Base all your moves around limited equipment, like a fitball, a bench or a medicine ball
• Allow for some flexibility in the circuit moves - if the step or the weights you planned for aren't available, have some alternatives in mind!
• Use the "clock" function on your phone as a timer - this way you can just keep going without needing to check the clock or counting down the minutes
• Instead of doing lots of repetitions with smaller weights, go heavier and do less repetitions
• On machines, push the level up and do moderate/high intensity intervals rather than going at a moderate pace for ages (you do NOT need to spend an hour reading Women's Weekly on a bike)
• Make up a 40 minute playlist of intense music to drive you through your workout and when the music stops, game over



Stopwatch function

• OR work out with a friend who's up for the challenge and notice how 40 minutes flies by when you're sharing the struggle

Reverse curl

 Using a bench, do reverse curls - then get up and do step ups on the same bench, turn around and do tricep presses off the bench and then repeat until your timer goes off.

TIP: Working the upper body followed immediately by lower body maximises calories burned by forcing blood to rush from muscles in the upper body to lower and vice versa!