In The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More and Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better by Jonathan Bailor, the author recommends a very time efficient workout plan.

I’ll let you look into the details yourself, but basically you do only 4 exercises of 10 reps each to hit your major muscle groups, only 1-2x/week in combination with leading an active lifestyle of walking, biking, etc.

When I first saw that the author was recommending only a very short workout once to twice a week, I was suspicious. However, since he includes the caveat about also doing plenty of walking, biking, etc (which he doesn’t consider “exercise”), I was open to considering only “working out” a couple times per week.

I was still suspicious that I would see any results though. For one thing, one of the exercises is negative pull-ups, and for those of you who have been following my blog, you know I’ve been doing those for a while. So I didn’t think that 10 of them 2x/week would do anything.

However, after the first time doing the plan he recommends, I was surprised how sore my muscles were afterwards! I think it might have to do with just doing all 10 reps right after each other with no breaks in between. And my legs were also sore from the squats included in the program. So I was impressed!

But since then the results haven’t been so dramatic. I might not be pushing myself as hard as the author says you need to, I don’t know.

For now, I think it’s basically a good plan, but with the modification of doing it 3-4x/week like I normally would. It’s still time-efficient that way, and since it hits a bunch of different muscles, I don’t worry if I just walk or something the rest of the time. Actually, I’ve been into jump-roping lately. 🙂

What’s your favorite workout?