Josh Sherman
Part of my 2018 goals this year is to do at least 1,000 reps of body weight exercises per month. Being too lazy to do the research on what kind of exercises I should be doing and on which days, I did what any red-blooded American would do…
I DOWNLOADED A WORKOUT APP!
The 7 Minute Workout seemed like it would help me accomplish my goal and I snagged the free version of the Editor’s Choice on the Google Play Store:
7 Minute Workout by Simple Design Ltd.
There’s quite a few other apps out there and they all seem to be fundamentally the same.
For the past week I have been doing the “classic” routine daily and occasionally have been doing the night time stretches routine with the kiddo.
The gist of the workout is that you are doing a bunch of exercises for 30 seconds at a time with a 10 second break in between. It’s supposed to be high intensity and allegedly you can maximize your results with a minimal effort.
Disclaimer: Both the classic workout (with 13 exercises) and the night time stretches (with 11 stretches) clock it at over 7 minutes.
A week into the workout, I can confirm that it’s definitely harder than I had expected it to be. Like any workout, it’s all about what you put into it, and I’ve been trying to put in a solid effort.
Even with it being less than 10 minutes, I am pretty winded by the end. The first few days were pretty rough too. Quite a few muscles that were being worked for the first time in a long time.
What’s been truly enjoyable is the fact that it’s not very long. From the moment you start, you’re almost to the end and that’s made it easy to push through.
With that, it’s recommended that you do the circuit 2-3 times to get an optimal workout. At this stage, I’m only going through once until I am not so spent by the end, then I plan to add to it.
There is a good variety of exercises on the class routine and there are other routines that target specific body parts. I have yet to feel bored with the exercises the way I did by only doing burpees for an entire year.
What’s been great is that by doing the 7 minute workout, I have been able to easily accomplish my monthly workout goal in a matter of days. At the end of the month I plan to re-evaluate my goal and adjust accordingly.
My best guesstimate is that I should be able to 5-6x my monthly goal of 1,000 reps. A week in and I’ve already done over 150+ push ups, 120+ crunches and 160+ crunches. That’s not even counting the time logged doing wall sits and planks!
All in, I’ve done nearly 1,500 reps in the first week of 2018!
So what have you already accomplished this year? Comment below!
