If you only had ten minutes each day to build strength, what would you do and why?

Question

Gina Grain · Answer

If I only had 10 minutes a day to work on strength, this is what I would do. I would start with activation. I'd get my glutes activated by doing like a three-way band routine and go back and straight back, about 8 or 10 of those, get those glutes warmed up. From there, I would just start with a bodyweight squat, working on patterning and warming up the legs. After that, we're moving into the first strength circuit. You grab on to dumbbells and perform a rearfoot elevated split squat as you're strengthening exercise there, moving right into a tricep dip on that same bench. Looking at time efficiency, folks, here, we would do that. Now personally, I like to always include some kind of plyometric training, so I would go for like a snap down or a snap down to a staggered stance. And you can also incorporate a hop in in there. There's one circuit for you. The next circuit is going to be a push and a posture. So because we're lacking time, I would do a double arm chest press in the glute hip lift position, double arm chest press in a glute hip lift position. From there, I'd roll myself over and posture exercise, so push and posture circuit. Grab on to an item. Snow angels is one of my favorite exercises, back and forth, opening and closing, passing that item. And then you can switch to the other side of the direction. And lastly, I would then perform a pull exercise. So grabbing on to those same dumbbells, we can get into a forward fold position and performing a double arm bent over row. And that can be paired with a balanced single leg arm curl to shoulder press. So within these three circuits, we've got our leg-- got four warm-up for glutes, leg strength, a little bit of plyometrics. We've got a push. We have a pull. We have a posture. And if there's time, let's get in and deliver-- let's get into a core exercise. We do a side plank both ways, or you can get into plank saws or plank rotations if there's time. So anyways, 10 minutes, there you go. About two or three minutes each set should fit right within the time zone.

Tim Crowley · Answer

I love these type of questions. I actually think about these type of things all the time. So what I would do is, if I had 10 minutes, I'd actually say, I'd do it nine minutes. So what I'd do is take three exercises. So let's say we're going to do an upper body push, an upper body pull, and some sort of a squat. So I'm going to say, I'm going to do a dumbbell chest press. I'm going to do a pull up and then into a trap bar deadlift. I would do each exercise for about eight reps, which is going to take me approximately 30 seconds. I'm going to get 30 seconds rest, and I'm going to do three rounds. So typically, we'll call this a three by three. It's actually a very effective way of training in season, and especially if you have short periods of time. If you could do that three times a week, I think that can be really effective and give you a really big bang for your 10 minutes.

Dan Daly · Answer

I suggest athletes lift two to four times per week. So if you only have 10 minutes within those two to four sessions per week, pick three movements that cover your whole body. So in this case, we have a lower-body movement, we have an upper-body pushing movement, and an upper-body pulling movement. Here's a trap bar deadlift, and then we go into a barbell push press, and then you have a pull-up pattern third. I would focus on strength, with a progressive increase in load, and do anywhere from three to six sets of three to six repetitions, and again, progressively increasing the load. I would add a variance in the loads that I do. And the sets and reps as well would be kind of inherent, based on that. But you could mix up and have a high, medium, and low weight day.

Blair O'Donovan · Answer

If I had 10 minutes a day to build strength, what I do, and why I funny enough, my schedule is hectic enough at times where that's all that I really have. I'm used to sessions like this, you know, micro dosing, I guess we could call it, but in a perfect world, 10 minutes, I'm focusing on the big lifts, of course, big compound lifts. I'll go through the ones. I prefer the most trap bar deadlift is going to be one of those. It's my main main bilateral lift leg lifts. Certainly a picking up a body push soar, call it a bench press or a push-up upper body. Pull love the pull up some variations everything you can do there and then lastly I'll prefer like a single leg exercise. Really working a lot on skater squats and single leg on supported. And within 10 minutes, I can easily get three to four productive hard sets within that time frame. And what I probably would do is and I've done this in the past is spend a few weeks. Rotating rep, ranges anywhere from six to eight and do some high high rep work 50s and 20s. Bring them down to 325's, just mix and match and you get a lot of variety for those rep. Ranges, of course, but then I also like the concept of like same same, but different, so you can take all those same movements and if you change your hand position a little bit on the bench, press from a normal position to a close grip. It's very different if you take your, your pull up position and And you go to neutral grip or mixed grip, very different. And a lot of ways to play with variations there that can last forever. So, that's how I go about it. Honestly, is it at the moment and hopefully it helps out

Hayley Hollander · Answer

Hi Ryan. I love this question. If I Only Had ten minutes a day to build strength, what would I do? And why I would actually do what's called escalating density training. This has a huge Metabolic Effect on the body, but I'm also getting the mechanical stress and building strength. So escalating density training rebt, is where you're going to pick two antagonistic exercises, so think of an upper push and an upper pole, and you do those back to back. You're going to choose a 10 rep, max weight. You perform. Five repetitions continuing to go from upper push up a pole and then the rest is needed between those movements and you can begin to even drop the reps with fatigue. And the goal is to perform as many reps as you can in 10 minutes. So, let's say, if I only attended today, if I chose upper push and a pull on day one, then on day two, I could do. Do lower push and lower pole. And I can continue that kind of escalating density, training throughout the week, giving my upper body arrest on Tuesday. If I started on Monday with the upper body and then lower body on Tuesday, upper body again on Wednesday and I can change those pushing and pulling movements with a vertical or horizontal emphasis. So that's what I will do.

Bryan Doo · Answer

All right, she got 10 minutes a day. What are you doing? Strength-wise thinking gotta do a circuit into some kind of getting your heart rate. Up, trying to build multiple muscle groups at one time. So some, I'd probably start with a push-up standard push-up. Something can do a good amount with then I would probably do like a some kind of light, plyo, maybe a squat jump or a split squat to a hop switch to the opposite side then probably end up doing some kind of some kind of core exercise. Maybe doing some plank up down Downs. Maybe grab a stability ball and do some some, some kind of arm out and ends with the feet on the ball or the hands of the ball. Just some kind of core work there and I might try to do some handstand push-ups. If I was in really good shape, again, love those and then then come back to the leg exercise. Maybe do a single leg. S LDL to a skip the combination of everything and Kind of cycle through that a bunch of times for 10 minutes.

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"If you only had ten minutes each day to build strength, what would you do and why?"