By GABRIELLE NGUYEN, Daily Cal
Are you a busy human? Yes, you are. We know that because you are a UC Berkeley student (probably). One of the hardest things to achieve at Cal as a student is having a proper exercise schedule. Often, our free time is dedicated to … not being free.
Using free time to workout. (GABRIELLE NGUYEN/Daily Cal)
Generally, scheduling 30- to 55-minute sessions at least three times per week is ideal. And we understand that this can be difficult to achieve sometimes. Fortunately, we have come up with various ways for you to have efficient workouts that will work out (heh, get it?) with almost any schedule.
Do bodyweight exercises. Bodyweight exercises are exactly what they sound like. You use your own body weight to move around and build strength. There are many, many, MANY bodyweight exercises that you can choose from. These are often desirable because they usually work more than only one muscle or part of your body all at the same time. Here is a list that you can choose from. Our personal favorites are mountain climbers, downward dog pushups and dips.
Utilize high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. HIIT is when you perform exercises in short intervals of high and low intensity, consecutively, often with short breaks. HIIT can include a variety of exercises. For example, using the bodyweight exercises we talked about above, you could do 30 seconds of mountain climbers, 10 downward dog pushups and 20 dips, without rest in between each set. Then you could perform another three bodyweight exercises (similar to the way you did before) again with no rest. You could do about five of these “three-set” patterns in a row, with 10 seconds of rest in between. And at the end of those five, you could take a one-minute break and then repeat that whole cycle again about five times. This is extremely efficient, as you can achieve this in about 30 minutes. HIIT is awesome not only because it is efficient, but also because it strengthens your muscles while increasing your endurance simultaneously.
Choose Recreational Sports Facility classes that are the most profitable to that bod. What we mean is, make sure you choose classes that don’t take too much time out of your day and that will make you have a workout that is as good as a three-hour workout session in the weight room. Here are some of our top choices:
High Intensity Interval Training: This is exactly what we described above but in RSF-class form. Do this if it might be hard to motivate yourself to do these intensive exercises when you’re alone. Short bursts of exercise might sound relatively easy at times, and you might think that you won’t really work up a sweat. You’re wrong.
20/20/10: This class consists of 20 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of strength training and 10 minutes of core and stretching. It’s a 50-minute efficient workout that has a cool name.
P90X: You’ve probably seen it on TV, heard about your friend’s parent doing it and heard that it works. This exercise is only 25 minutes and can be extremely helpful to the busiest of bees. And who needs a DVD when you can go to the RSF?
Total Body Blitz: This class is usually only about half an hour. Fitting this into your schedule would be very simple, and it includes cardio and weight training.
Read the full article HERE.
