In October we moved home and had a holiday. It’s fair to say we had a lot going on. I knew I wanted to make sure I kept up with working out regularly as it’s taken me forever to finally make it a habit, but I also knew I needed to find a way to make sure my workouts were quick but effective as I was very short on time.
I was motivated by the fact I wanted a bikini body for my holiday. FYI by bikini body, I simply mean feeling my best in a bikini.
I don’t think you need to look a certain way or be a certain size to rock a bikini, but I do think confidence makes a huge difference. Personally, when I know I’ve been working out and taking care of my body I feel better within myself and my body.
Over the month I had three go-to workouts that I did and I really noticed a difference from doing them in regards to the shape of my body. Hence I felt more bikini confident.
Here Are The 3 Workouts I Did:
Workout 1: Power Yoga
I’m working to be leaner and more flexible, but I find traditional yoga boring. I can never hold a lot of the harder yoga positions and I end up feeling like I’m not doing anything beneficial. I basically just feel like I spend my whole time trying not to fall over.
Then there is the other extreme where a lot of exercises are too easy that I still don’t feel like I’m doing much and definitely don’t feel I’m getting a proper workout.
Power yoga is something I really like for this reason. In power yoga whilst there is a bit of holding positions, there is also a lot of moving. That way I feel I get the best of both worlds.
I’m not bored holding loads of positions and I can feel myself getting a sweat on. The positions where I do need to hold give me a chance to work on my core strength and improve my balance which will only make me better at traditional yoga.
I got into doing a 10-minute power yoga video I found on YouTube (the video above) and I did it every week, only once a week, but just from doing that I noticed I was getting better each time with the moves, my strength and my balance.
I haven’t perfected all the moves yet (some I’m still terrible at hehe), but after 4 sessions I’ve noticed my performance is much better so I’m gonna keep going back to this one until I feel I have all the yoga positions nailed. It’s working for me and it only takes 10 minutes so I plan to keep it up.
Workout 2: Quick Run Followed By Strength Training
On Friday’s, Clark was only at pre-school for 2.5 hours and with the walk there and back I had less than two hours to exercise, have a bath (we didn’t have a shower until we moved) and do all my errands so that didn’t leave much time.
So what I’ve been doing (on Fridays) was dropping him to pre-school then running the long way back home, which would take me about 12 minutes. I would then follow it with 10 strength training exercises. I’d keep each exercise to 20 reps.
I would do anything from bodyweight exercise like press-ups to squats with dumbbells. I tended to mix up the exercises from week to week but kept in the exercises I struggled with the week before so I could improve upon them.
The whole thing would only take about 25 minutes and I could see an improvement in my running and strength every week.
Workout 3: HIIT
HIIT workouts (high-intensity interval training) are arguably one of the most effective ways to workout.
I have an interval timer app on my phone and I have it set for 45-second intervals. I do 20 different exercises and as each one is only 45 seconds it’s really doable. I alternate the exercises each time from something high intensity like burpees or skipping to something low-intensity like a power yoga move or crunches to give myself a chance to get my breath back.
It’s a really short, but super effective workout. I’m always sweating and feeling great after from all the endorphins.
I think that’s the key with exercise to make sure you always push yourself. How hard you workout beats how long you workout any day.
So that’s it, my 3 go-to workouts all under 25 minutes. I really feel even if you only have 10 minutes to spare you can make the world of difference to how you feel, your body and your fitness levels just by regularly working out in short bursts.
If you like this post then I also have a post with tips to make working-out not suck, click here for that post.
This post is part of my Wellness Wednesday weekly feature, for more Wellness Wednesday posts click here. Every Wednesday there is a new wellness post at 7pm. Update: this feature no longer runs but there are still loads of blog posts here.
