Regular exercises can be very useful for your health and help you in maintaining or losing your health. These can be very useful in improving your mood. But for many people, it is often quite difficult to find enough time for exercising. A lot of people struggle to balance long working hours, their job, daily chores such as cleaning and cooking and family commitments. It can appear to be quite impossible to add regular exercises to the everyday routine.
What if you could only work out for 10 minutes on most days of the week and still manage to get enough benefits for your overall health? Would you not like to do that?
Can 10-Minute Workouts Help?
For most people, it is possible to find at least 10 spare minutes to spend every day in exercising whether after getting up, before taking a shower, before having their lunch or sometime before their dinner. Even with just 10 minutes of exercising, it is possible to improve your health and fitness.
Working out for 10 minutes every day can be really useful for you, particularly in case you are not exercising consistently already. That being said, it really matters what you do during the 10 minutes that you invest in exercising.
Exercising for 10 minutes can appear to be short enough to fit into your daily routine, whenever you have that much of time. It is important to note that many exercises can be performed without using any equipment. However, if you really want to add some weight to your workouts, you can use some everyday objects lying about around your home – such as bags of flour, fabric conditioner bottles, water bottles, buckets of water, empty cylinders etc.
In case you are generally new to exercises, even working out for 10 minutes every day can make a lot of difference to your general fitness, and health and stamina levels. It is a good idea to begin gradually and then build up to intense workouts for 10 minutes over a period of time. A good way to begin is to choose an exercise and find out how many reps you can comfortably perform during 10 minutes of time. You can start from that point.
Some time ago, the Boston University carried out a study – which revealed that 10 minute blocks of workouts combined with more humdrum tasks such as washing the car, mowing the loan, gardening or cleaning can be sufficient to make a good difference to the body.
What are the Health Benefits of performing 10-Minute Workouts?
According to research, short workouts for 10 minutes can be useful for health and fitness improvement – especially for those who are not used to working out. Some of the health and fitness advantages of performing 10 minute workouts include:
Improvement in cardiovascular fitness
Even as short duration workouts as for 10 minutes can result in better oxygen uptake of your body – which is a measure of cardiovascular and endurance fitness.
According to a randomized controlled research, it was revealed that obese or overweight women who were generally stuck with a sedentary lifestyle managed to improve their cardio-respiratory fitness with daily walking for just 10 to 15 minutes as compared to women in a control group.
In another research conducted among men with sedentary lifestyles, it was revealed that with short interval group biking for 10 minutes of time (with just a minute of high intensity biking), participants could increase their uptake of oxygen in the same way as a group exercising at a moderate pace for 50 minutes. Similar improvements in fitness were noticed in both groups and they did better at the end of the 12 week study period than the control group.
These studies help in supporting the idea that even short workouts can be useful for fitness improvement, particularly for people who are not active at present.
Improved blood sugar level control
You can manage your blood sugar levels much better through exercises and making other healthy changes in your daily habits and lifestyle. With regular exercises, you can reduce your risk of pre-diabetes and diabetes. However, to get benefits, you do not have to work out for a prolonged duration. According to research, it has been found that even working out for short periods like 10 minutes can be useful in reducing diabetes risks and aiding in better blood sugar level control.
According to a research, it was revealed that fast workouts with short bursts of intensity, completed half an hour before meals, can help reduce the amount of blood sugar in insulin-resistant diabetics better than a 30-minute workout every day.
In another study, it was revealed that blood sugar control was better in older adults when they went for a short walk after meals as compared to one walk for duration of 45 minutes every day.
Better mood and cognitive focus
It has been found through studies that cognitive focus and mood can receive a boost with cardio workouts like walking, swimming and biking.
Research indicates that even micro workouts for as short duration as 10 minutes can be useful in helping improve focus and mood – which can assist you all through the day.
In a study it was revealed that participants taking part in 10 minutes of exercise of moderate to vigorous intensity exhibited instant improvements in focus, as compared to a group of people just sitting and reading.
One more study revealed that participants jogging for just 15 minutes every day suffered from reduced risk of depression and better mood. It also hinted at the possibility that performing less intense activities scattered all through the day can also help improve the mood.
Conclusion
If you want to stay healthy and fit, regular exercise is essential and must be in your daily routine. It can be difficult for you to find enough time to work out for 1 hour or even more. But as you can see, research has revealed that even short-time workouts can boost your mood, improve your focus, enhance your cardiovascular health, promote better quality of sleep, reduce mortality and boost your health in many other ways.
