No excuses: 6 quick sports quickies

Your goal is to stay fit and look good? But the problem is that you don't have enough time in your life to do regular strength and endurance training? That's not much more than a lame excuse. Because if you really want to reach your goal, you'll find a way to get there. With the help of our sport quickies, you'll be able to use even short rest periods and waiting times efficiently to work on your fitness. And the best part is that each of the following 6 mini-units takes no longer than two minutes. So what are you waiting for? Let's go!

1. a short plank session for the six pack

Crunches and sit-ups were yesterday. Much more flexible in everyday life is the forearm support, also known as the plan. To do this, get into the starting position of the push-up, but instead of placing your hands shoulder-width apart on the floor, rest your forearms on them. Make sure your body forms a straight line from your heels to your butt and back to your head.

Now hold this position for as long as you can to work your abs in a very uncomplicated way. The goal is to gradually increase the number of seconds each day. It's up to you to decide how many repetitions you want to do. If you have a lot of time, you can spend five minutes for the quickie, but it should be at least two minutes.

2. regular stretching for supple movements.

Fitness is by far not only about strength. The flexibility of joints, muscles and tendons is also of particular importance. This is the only way to prevent injuries and optimize your performance. Stretching is an excellent way to achieve this goal in a time-saving manner, because you can do many exercises in just a few minutes during your lunch break, right after getting up, or even in front of your desk while proofreading a document, for example.

However, it is important that you stretch your arms and legs as well as your back correctly. Accordingly, it makes sense to stretch slowly and in a controlled manner to the limit of the pain range. However, you should never forcefully stretch into this area due to the risk of injury. We recommend a stretch duration of 20 to 30 seconds per run, before you switch arms or legs, for example, or take a short break.

3. every step keeps fit

Okay, this isn't really a quickie workout in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it's about making your everyday life much more efficient in terms of the amount of exercise you do. So instead of taking the elevator, always take the stairs, because as you learned in physics class at school, it takes a lot of energy to move a heavy mass against gravity.

Climbing stairs is also a very effective way of exercising the thigh muscles. Alternatively, you can also use your lunch break for a short walk or get into the habit of walking around the office while on the phone instead of staying seated at your desk. Of course, these are just a few ideas. But we are sure that there are enough starting points of this kind in your everyday life.

4. mini workouts for a boost of energy

Our performance curve is anything but constant throughout the day. One way to get rid of midday fatigue or the four o'clock hole is to do high-intensity mini-workouts that really get your circulation going in no time at all. At this point, you can use the Tabata or HIIT principle, for example. In practice, this means that you perform an exercise in intervals. For example, you perform as many squats as you can in 20 seconds. Then you take a short break of 10 seconds before you start the next round.

You repeat this procedure until your self-set training time has expired. Whether this is two, four or six minutes is entirely up to you. The specific choice of exercises is also up to you. The only important thing is that they are exercises that use as much muscle mass as possible. While squats, jumps, jumping jacks, burpees, etc. are very suitable, this is not the case with biceps curls, for example.

5. the boxer workout in between

A workout for in between must fulfill one prerequisite above all: It must be quick, easy and flexible to implement without much effort. What could be better suited for a short but intense training session than a round of rope skipping, as the big names in the boxing scene constantly practice?

A session of just 10 minutes has the same effect on your cardiovascular system as half an hour of light jogging or three quarters of an hour of easy cycling. You can make the workout even more intense by not just monotonously jumping in place, but by always incorporating slight variations. For example, you can jump with one leg for a minute, cross your legs or do additional jumps in between.

6. quick yoga brings fitness for the soul

When it comes to fitness, it's especially important to maintain a balance between body and mind. A quick yoga session in the morning or during your lunch break is the ideal way to achieve this. You don't necessarily have to go for the most complex asanas, even comparatively simple variations like the sun salutation work wonders at this point and help you relax your body and mind, preparing you for any challenge in the best possible way.