Real Simple Workouts (reviewed)

You know how you always see those workouts in magazines that claim to be the best moves that only take a short amount of time? The other night I was flipping through a copy of Real Simple from April 2011 and it had a 15 minute workout in it with all sorts of moves to strengthen some part of your body- I didn't pay that much attention. But later I thought, "I wonder if those workouts are any good..." I looked it up online and found that Real Simple has several of these "15 Minutes and You're Done" workouts. I decided to try them out on the jr. high exercise class I teach.

#1 Trim Your Inner Thighs

I actually liked this workout. It has several types of squats and some exercises I had never done before. The last one burned! The majority of the students gave it a thumbs up. It's worth your time.

#2 Work Your Abs

If you already know ab exercises you can skip this article. It's pretty much the same old ab moves you are going to get everywhere else. It may be a good workout but is nothing exciting if you are a regular exerciser.

#3 Strengthen Your Lower Back

There were some very unique exercises in this article. The scorpion stretch felt really good. I go through phases of having back problems and will totally use this again. The students didn't like it as much because they couldn't "feel" it like they can in their muscles.

#4 Tone Your Shoulders
This was a pretty good workout. The warm up and cool down were just as hard as the workout!


There are a few others. I didn't do the glute one with the kids for obvious reasons...

I don't like the "and you're done" part. Doing one of these workouts in a day is NOT going to cut it. Adults need at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity at least 3 days per week. But when we put all four together it made for a pretty nice strength and tone workout- especially to get out of a rut of doing the same workouts over and over.