Work all your main muscle groups with this circuit style weekly workout plan. The workout is only 20 minutes long, so doing it 3 times a week will only take an hour out of your schedule.
How to do the workout
The 5 exercises are below. Do each exercise for one minute and then start again, doing 3 sets of all the exercises in total. You should also do a warm up before you start, using the exercises in the warm up chart. You can read more about why warm up is important here.
See the end of the post to get a printable chart of the exercises.
Before you do the workout, please read these exercise safety guidelines.
Warm up exercises
Main workout exercises
- Stand with your feet about hip distance apart.
- Leg action: Take one leg out behind you and touch your toes to the floor. Now bend at both knees, so that you lower your body towards the floor.
- Arm action: at the same time, raise your arms in front of your body up to shoulder height.
- Return to the starting position and repeat on your other leg.
- Stand with your feet about hip distance apart and take your arms up to shoulder height. Keep your shoulders relaxed – don’t shrug.
- Keeping your arms straight, circle them for the given no. of reps clockwise and then reverse the direction.
- Stand tall with your shoulders back and down.
- Get your arms into the starting position: upper arms parallel with the floor, elbows bent at 90 and arms held in front of your body, as shown in the diagram.
- Squat to the side. At the same time, open your arms out, keeping your upper arms parallel with the floor.
- Come back to the starting position.
- Repeat, this time squatting to the other side.
- Raise your arms overhead.
- Lower your arms as you lift one knee.
- Raise your arms as you lower the knee.
- Lower your arms as you lift the other knee.
Important: as the muscles are held in a static contraction for the wall sit, it can cause a rise in blood pressure. This means that anyone with high blood pressure should not do this exercise.
- Stand with your back to the wall, about 18-24 inches away from it, legs hip distance apart.
- Using your hands to help support you, bend your knees as you lean your back against the wall.
- When your back is fully in contact with the wall, start to slide down, until your thighs are parallel with the floor.
- Check that your knees are lined up above your ankles – adjust your foot position if not.
The weekly workout plan
For this circuit, you should do each exercise for 1 minute, then move onto the next exercise. After you’ve done all 5, start again. Do 3 full circuits per workout and do 3 workouts per week. You can get a printable workout chart using the form below.
Get a printable copy of this chart
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After you sign up, you’ll get 2 e-mails:
The first will ask you for a one-click confirmation of your subscription
Once you’ve confirmed, you’ll get a second e-mail with a link to your download
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