Most people are under the impression that they need to spend hours at the gym. Start it out with x minutes of cardio to warm-up at y% of their max heart rate. Then do 3-5 sets of 12-15 reps of different lifts and machines that isolate everything, making sure you keep things balanced. (if you work chest make sure you work back, etc, etc).

You can get strong and build your entire body with 5 simple barbell lifts. Back squat, standing overhead press, bench press, power clean and deadlift. That gives you 2 pulls, 2 pushes and a squat. Every workout you squat, push then pull. 3 sets of 5 and increase the load every time. Simple. Yes it will take a while because when you’re lifting near maximal loads you need to rest several minutes between work sets.

If getting strong isn’t for you, you can build up your cardiovascular and pulmonary systems while maintaining strength by working in the anaerobic pathway. This means shorter, really high intensity workouts where you are primarily working your muscles without oxygen.  Think 400m sprints. These take about a minute to 1.5 minutes, do 4 of these with 2 minutes rest in between.

Not only does working your anaerobic pathway allow you to do more work in those shorter time frames, but you will also increase your aerobic capacity. The reverse is not true, working your aerobic pathway will not increase your anaerobic capacity.

Want a workout that is short and sweet? You could do that 400m sprint repeat I mentioned earlier, or this little doozy is shockingly brutal.

400m Walking Lunge. A walking lunge is where you take a long step forward, dropping your back leg’s knee to the ground. You don’t want to let your front knee get too far ahead of your toes so that you can still drive thru your heel.

If you are new to lunges and/or this high intensity stuff, scale this distance. Try it for 100m, or 200m. But if you want the full dose, try 400m. See if you can do it in 10 minutes.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com