At Wildfitness, we are not interested in wearing the right clothes to train in, having the right equipment to train with or the right place to train in. You can move anywhere, with anything, wearing anything or nothing.
And you can train for any length of time. It doesn’t have to be the standard one hour session. Sometimes you only have 10 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes is all you feel like doing. Sometimes you feel a burst of energy (or anger!) and need a quick physical outlet.
Here are 4 ideas for short 10 minute workouts that are enough for you to be different and more Wild afterwards:
1.Run up a mountain: This is an actual session that we do on our Wildfitness courses in Crete (devised by Ed and Jess – credit to you).
You need: 1 mountain / hill / stair case
Begin by just waking up your ‘neural body armour’ by balancing on one leg with eyes closed (this is particularly important if you are on uneven terrain and your ankles need to be on alert). Do some leg swings to let your joints scope out the range of movement they will be doing. Jump up and down at 180 jumps/ minute (or there abouts!) to get your natural optimal elastic rhythm fired up.
Then pick a point that you are going to get to – and run there as fast as you can uphill. Don’t take your foot off the accelerator until you get there, even if for you the accelerator means walking some of it. In Crete the distance is about 1K and takes between 5 – 15 minutes. It involves scrabbling up a steep slope and then running up a relentless uphill track. But any uphill topology will do.
Simple, challenging for any fitness level, high intensity and results in a great view.
2. Tabata:
We use the ‘tabata’ format on a lot of our courses as a ‘boost’ at the end of a session. Pick a movement, preferably a natural movement that uses your whole body. For example:
- The classic burpee
- Lie on the floor and then in one movement to standing (surfer’s get up)
- Swinging a heavy weight
- Running up and down steps or sprinting
Do this movement at the highest possible intensity for you for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second rest. Do this 8 times.
This is a total of 4 minutes in all, after an appropriate warm up. Amazing to wake you up and inject some intensity into your day.
3. Nail a move
There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes upon you when you are trying to do a movement that you have never done before, especially if it is complex or scary. For example jumping from one wall to another, or balancing on a slack line. It’s best to focus completely on your new movement for a short period of time and then stop and come back to it much later when your subconscious has had time to integrate the learning.
Moves to work on in 10 minutes:
- Vaults
- Vertical jumps / jumps in general
- Wall run
- The duck walk or the monkey run
4. Jump into cold water
If it is cold enough, it sends your heart rate through the roof, and gives your entire physiology a wakeup call. Even just jumping in and jumping out is enough to make you feel entirely physically and mentally alive for several hours.
The message is: Take every opportunity to move, even if it isn’t of standard workout length and format. Particularly if you feel in the mood – ride on every spontaneous urge to move (well almost every).
