Today was a crazy day.

I had non-stop appointments for 8 hours straight, including a couple deep tissue massages.

Needless to say that when I finally sat down I was spent. That's OK, because I love what I do for a living.

I get to wear comfortable clothes, I own a private personal training studio, which means nobody is around to bug me or my clients. No weirdos lurking around the gym, no inconsiderate people leaving sweat pools on benches and the music is good.

Anyway, after my day I didn't really want to workout. I could have believed the excuse I was giving myself "I worked hard all day training clients and giving a couple deep tissue massages, I don't need to workout".

It's true, I probably could've gotten by taking a day off. The only problem is that believing that excuse begins a cycle...and a bad cycle.

Where does it stop?

Pretty soon I'll be telling myself that I don't have time to workout.

That's not true. I've been telling my clients that for months, if not years. That's not a viable excuse.

If you have 10 minutes, you can fit in an effective fat loss workout and I'll prove it.

All you have to do is make sure to include exercises that work many muscles at once. Exercises like push-ups, lunges, squats, chin-ups, dips, etc. You also cannot use machines for these workouts. Only dumbbells, bodyweight or resistance tubing.

The next thing you need to make sure to do is limit the rest time. If you sit around and chat up your workout partner or watch television in between sets, you won't get anything done. It renders your workout largely useless.

So now that you know the rules, here's the workout I bucked up and did after my hectic day. You can do it too if you have the equipment in your home gym.

Warm-up 3 sets:

Wood Chops - 15 reps

Push-ups - 15 reps

I had a little over 8 minutes left in my 10 minute workout after the warm-up and did as many sets as possible of the following:

Chin-up - 10 reps

Dips - 10 reps

I only rested 15-20 seconds after the dips before returning to the chin-ups. I don't remember exactly how many sets I got in because I was breathing so hard and was in kind of a daze from all those chin-ups.

Needless to say, this fast 10 minute workout was a killer!

Before you bash the workout and say I didn't work my legs, I'd like you to give it a try and then tell me that it's not an effective workout.

Copyright (c) 2008 Ed Scow