Stay Fit in No Time

By Selene Yeager, Women's Health When your schedule is overloaded like a sherpa on Everest, there are days, weeks, even months when you make it to the gym as often as the paparazzi spot TomKat's offspring. But luckily, that doesn't mean you're destined to morph into Kirstie Alley before she met Jenny Craig. In fact, U.S. military studies show you can stop the skid toward mush by doing just one- to two-thirds the exercise you usually do. "Women make the mistake of thinking, 'If I can't do my full routine, why bother?'" says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts. "But just one workout a week will maintain your strength. And if you exercise at the same or greater intensity, you can keep your fitness while doing much less than usual." Just how long will this kind of bare-minimum workout keep you in decent shape? If you can devote about 20 minutes to exercise once a week, you can preserve fitness for up to 2 months — plenty of time, we hope, for whatever's clogging your schedule to ease up. Until then, here's precisely the least you need to do to keep your endurance, strength, and flexibility intact.
Endurance
Expert Rec
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) prescribes 20 to 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (brisk walking, running, or a cardio-intensive class) on most days of the week to keep your heart and lungs pumping like champs. To keep your pounds in check, the USDA recommends 60 to 90 minutes.

Get by with Less
You can slice your usual cardio routine by up to half as long as you add intensity, according to a 2005 Canadian study. Researchers found that regular exercisers who cranked out 30-second, full-throttle sprints on exercise bikes — 15 minutes' total training time, including rest — three times a week for 2 weeks as their sole source of training doubled the time they could ride hard before hitting the wall. Follow-up research revealed that exercisers pumping out 10 minutes of sprints at a similarly high intensity three times a week for 6 weeks reaped identical fitness gains to those ticking off an hour a day of moderate-intensity exercise 6 days a week for the same period.

The Least You Can Do
Climb. Gyms aren't filled with StairMasters for nothing. "Stairs are the most convenient, and highly effective, training tool," says Harvey Newton, C.S.C.S., owner of Newton Sports Consulting in Haiku, Hawaii. There's nothing like fighting gravity to add intensity. Duh, you say. But Newton suggests this twist on the standard stairwell slog: one-two stair repeats, which work your muscles harder. Start at the bottom of two to four flights of stairs. The first time up, take them one step at a time with quick, light foot strikes. The second, take two at a time. Walk down nice and easy and repeat for 10 minutes.

Strength
Expert Rec
To build muscle, the ACSM recommends a minimum of one 8- to 12-rep set of 8 to 10 exercises targeting all major muscle groups, 2 to 3 days a week. Most fitness experts suggest two to three sets for maximum strength gains.

Get by with Less
Reach for the weights once a week, targeting all the muscle groups you typically work. A 2002 study from Ball State University put 10 sedentary adults on a traditional strength-training program 3 days a week. After 3 months, half the group returned to inactivity, while the other half hit the weights just once a week. The quitters returned to their weakened state, but the once-a-weekers maintained all the strength gains they'd developed in the first 3 months.

The Least You Can Do
Try Dr. Westcott's once-a-week, 5-minute strength routine, "The Power of Four". "Navy research shows you can maintain strength and even lose fat and gain muscle, by doing just four exercises," Dr. Westcott says. The key is to hit all of your major muscle groups. And one set will do it: Studies show you get 50 to 90 percent of your strength gains from your first set.

Flexibility
Expert Rec
The average desk drone loses a quarter to a third of her range of motion during her adult life. Not good: Decreased mobility sets you up for overuse injuries like muscle strains and tears. That's why the ACSM wants you to stretch 2 to 3 days every week, performing at least four stretching repetitions per muscle group.

Get by with Less
Stretching is the flossing of fitness: It's the first thing you blow off. But without it your muscles shorten and lose strength. Prisca Boris, cofounder of Yoga for Athletes in Vail, Colorado, recommends doing a downward dog to stave off tight muscles. "It's the ultimate pose for lengthening the spine," she says. To stretch your front: Stand with feet together. Extend your arms overhead, close to your ears, palms facing each other. Press your heels firmly into the floor and, keeping your arms and legs straight, lean your torso to the right as far as is comfortable. Repeat to the left. Do the down dog and stretch sequence three times a week, repeating the flow three times and holding each pose for 30 to 60 seconds — breathing deeply through your nose — before moving to the next.

The Least You Can Do
A once-a-day, full-body stretch sequence that you can do anywhere, any time — no sticking your butt in the air required. "Even 30 seconds a day can keep you from tightening up," says physical therapist Vincent Perez, director of sports therapy at Columbia-Presbyterian Eastside Hospital in New York City. To take your muscles through their full range of motion, try this: Stand up and windmill your arms from the shoulder three times forward and three times back. Place your hands on your hips and lean to the right from the waist, hold for 5 seconds, then repeat on the other side. With your right leg in front of you, draw three circles clockwise with your right heel, then reverse and do three circles counterclockwise. Repeat with the left leg.

Build the Body You Want

By Michael Mejia, Men's Health

Here's a sign of the times: You can actually hire people to come to your house and organize your closets. They'll also do your garage, your attic, and the shed in your backyard. These people are tough on pack rats. They ask questions like "Why do you have this box of dog leashes, but no dog?"

My job isn't all that different. As a trainer, if I see something in a client's workout-or my own-that doesn't belong there, I get rid of it. If I see a redundant exercise, it's gone. Disorganized workout? I organize it. And if I see a client doing a program he got out of some old bodybuilding magazine, I throw the whole thing out and start over.

I can't come to your gym and fix your workout (or organize your closets). But I can tell you what you need to know to organize your own regimen, based on your goals, your available time, and your experience. I'll even throw in six sample workouts for beginner through advanced lifters. Now, about those closets . . .

Goals
I assume the closet lady would start by asking, "What do you need this closet to do for you?" Me, I'd ask the same question, substituting the word "workout" for "closet." Usually, these goals fall into three categories:

Lose weight: If you're a beginner, start with a circuit routine in which you do 10 to 12 exercises one after the other, 10 to 15 repetitions per set, with little or no rest in between. Do two or three circuits.

If you're more advanced, try supersets. In these, you do two exercises back-to-back, rest 60 seconds, and then repeat once or twice. There are many ways to do supersets, but for fat loss, I'd like to see you use as much muscle as possible. One way is to pair exercises that work completely different muscles, such as squats and seated rows.

Build muscle: For most men, I recommend exercises that allow you to do eight to 12 repetitions per set. You can do them as straight sets-complete a set, rest about 60 seconds, do the next set of the same thing, and keep going that way until you've finished all your sets and are ready to move on to the next exercise.

If you have more experience, try supersets, but not the way you did them for fat loss. Pair synergistic exercises-two moves that work the same muscles. Usually, the first is a compound move to work a lot of muscles, the second a single-joint exercise to focus on one large muscle. So barbell bench presses might be followed by dumbbell flies. Shoulder presses could lead in to lateral raises.

Gain strength: There's no secret here-heavy weights, low repetitions (usually three to five per set for the most important moves, such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses), and longer rest (up to 4 minutes) between sets. You don't have to do every exercise this way, of course. Start with low reps on your main moves, then do more repetitions with lighter weights and shorter rest periods on less important ones.

Available Time
This is akin to the closet lady saying, "What's your budget?" Before I design a program, I need to know how much time you're going to put in. I'm going to assume everyone is willing to work out 40 to 60 minutes per session.

To me, that's a finite window, just as your closet is a finite size. If you want to do longer workouts, great, but I usually don't go in that direction. If I can't give you a system that gets it done in an hour or less, there's something wrong with my program. To me, the big variable here is how many days a week you're able and willing to work out.

Two days a week: No matter your level or goals, do total-body workouts. You want to hit your major muscles twice a week; otherwise, they'll be completely rested between workouts and will have no reason to grow.

If you're a beginner, stick to circuits, as I recommended above for fat loss. But if you're more interested in building muscle than in losing fat, I suggest doing sets of eight to 12 reps, with perhaps a little more rest in between exercises.

Another option for saving time is to do antagonistic supersets. These pair up movements that involve opposite muscle actions, such as situps and back extensions.

Three days a week: If you're not a beginner, you can adopt a split routine. The easiest to remember is the upper-body/ lower-body split. You alternate between them, so if you're training three times a week, you'll do upper-lower-upper 1 week, then lower-upper-lower the next.

If you're working out four times a week, you'll do upper on Monday and Thursday, and lower on Tuesday and Friday.

What you do during those split routines depends on your goals (explained above) and your experience (explained below).

Experience
Beginners make gains with just about any type of program, so it's best to keep it simple and safe-fairly high repetitions, basic exercises, total-body workouts. The more experience you have, the more you'll benefit from heavier weights and lower repetitions, more advanced exercises and techniques, and split routines.

Another issue is recovery. A beginner can recover in 48 hours and do fine with three total-body workouts a week. A more advanced lifter needs to give his muscles more time to recover, since he's hitting them harder.

Also, the more experienced you are, the less time you should spend on a program before moving on. A beginner can do the same program for 6 to 10 weeks without hitting a plateau. Grizzled iron vets may need to move on every 2 or 3 weeks. You probably fall somewhere in between.