Ab-Roller - With Kids

One of the reasons many people need a quick workout is because they have little kids that are in need of near constant attention. This is a workout you can buy an Ab Wheel for or even improvise one at home. If your kids need to be involved let them climb on your back. Be careful because the extra weight makes it much more difficult, so if you don't have much core strength yet, you may want to hold off on this. When you do try this I would recommend starting on your knees. Be sure to engage your back and your core muscles throughout the Wimpy Workout.  Because of the extra weight you will do fewer repetitions and still feel the burn.

Planking

Planking

Most people are familiar with planking, but this is one of my favorite Wimpy Workouts. This is a workout you will be finished with in 5 minutes or less, and may or may not break a sweat, but will feel for days. Unlike the fad of planking in random places by lying down with your hands at your side you try planking by either putting your forearms on the floor (or whatever you are planking on), or you can just put your hand(s) on it, and your feet, and then you use your core muscles to hold your body parallel to the ground. I rotate between my sides and facing the ground directly. Try it for 5 minutes without stopping and see if you can make it.

By the way, I don't always workout in my business clothes, but sometimes I just don't have time to do it otherwise.

Why Wimpy Workouts?

For years I have been in what I would call "normal" shape. That is, I'm not obese, or overweight for that matter, but I'm certainly not in what most people would call good shape, or fit. There are a hundred reasons why I'm sure, but there are three key reasons.

1. Despite wanting to be fit, I really don't like working out so hard that I'm more wet from sweat than I am after a nice shower. For whatever reason I feel physically ill, often for hours, if I push myself too hard in a good workout. 
2. Time. In the winter of 2010 my wife and I borrowed P90x from our friend and started doing the routine, but holy cow, who in the world has an hour and a half every day to work out? That's crazy, and I can see why you'd be lucky to make it the 90 days. I don't mean to bag on the workout because some of what I include in my own little Wimpy Workouts now I got the idea from programs such as P90x, but if you are able to do that type of regiment you may just be better off putting your efforts there instead of here.
3. Unlike many people out there who just love doing...xy or z, type workouts, or athletics, I have never had just one thing that I loved or wanted to devote an hour a day to. I never got into a good routine with any other workout because I just didn't love them.

So after taking years coming to understand why I couldn't get myself to exercise regularly I finally decided to take some action, make a change to make myself a little bit better off each day than I was before, and that is what this blog is about, doing something rather than nothing to take care of this great gift of a body that I have been blessed with. 

Over the past few months I have spent probably too much time searching the web to find bits and pieces of routines that I wanted to try, and then I did them, 10-15 minutes at a time. Sometimes I even got up to 20 minutes or more but I did it based on how I felt, how much time I had, and for the body area I wanted to work on that day.

Ya see, most workout programs give you enough to do for 20 minutes, then tell you to repeat it 3 times. I found a few exercises I wanted to do, and did them a couple times or just did 10 different exercises for whatever I wanted to work on. I know this sounds horrible but thus-far I don't know if I've really broken a sweat. I know I will when I go running (when it's not freezing outside) or on some other workouts in the future, and I think that is important to get your heart beating, but right now, I'm focusing on just doing what I can. I have decided to dedicate 15 min. a day to workout. I do it 5 times a week typically because I'll always end up missing a day and I don't workout on Sundays. 

So how is it working? Well you will have to watch and see, but I feel more fit now than I have in the last 10 years probably, and it is because I chose to be ok with Wimpy Workouts instead of trying to do what everyone else said I need to do. So I hope these ideas can be helpful to you, and help you get started doing something, even if it is just 10 minutes a day and even if you don't break a sweat.