WATCH: Five compound exercises for a full-body, calorie-burning workout

Many of us are time-strapped nowadays. There’s always something else that needs to be done, so exercise tends to be one of those things easily falls off the to-do list.

Often when I encounter people who tell me there is no time for exercise, my simple answer has always been “there are 24 hours in each day, surely you can find 30 minutes somewhere to squeeze in a quick workout”. This is often met with sarcasm or eyes being rolled at me, but it’s the honest truth.

I have, at times, done a quick 20- to 30-minute workout in my living room at 10 o’clock at night. I have even taken it a step further and a number of times jumped on to my indoor trainer and cycled for an hour late at night, simply because the day was full of other work. If you are serious about keeping in shape and exercise, it’s important to include your exercise programme as part of your work schedule.

A tip that I can share is that you can even go as far as diarising training sessions because they are essentially meetings with your health. With that said, you don’t need more that 30 minutes to get a good workout. Even a 15-minute workout can be enough. One of the easiest and quickest ways to get a full-body workout in the shortest amount of time is doing a quick compound exercise routine.

Compound exercises target and work multiple muscle groups at the same time. In fact, one compound exercise can do the work of several isolation exercises. So, a full-body workout can be achieved in as little as 15 minutes. For example, imagine selecting five compound exercises, performing each for 45 seconds, resting for 15 seconds (which equals one minute per exercise and five minutes for the five exercise) then repeating this routine three times. That equals 15 minutes of a full-body, calorie-burning workout.

Now, surely we can all find 15 minutes in our busy schedule. Let me share with you five compound exercises that you could use to target multiple muscle groups and essentially give yourself a good full-body workout.

They are:

1. Squats

Squats target the quadriceps (front thigh), hamstrings (back of thigh), gluteus maximus (buttocks) and all core muscles simultaneously.

2. Squat thrush aka burpee

Burpees target the biceps brachii and triceps brachii (arms), pectoralis major and minor (chest), the entire core group of muscles, quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and gastrocnemius (calves).

3. Push ups

Push ups target the chest, deltoids (shoulders), triceps, back, abdominals (core).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjc0O7OXS3g

4. Sumo dead lift

Sumo dead lifts target gluteus maximus (buttocks), quadriceps (front of thighs), adductor magnus (inner thigh), hamstrings (back of thigh), erector spinae (lower back).

5. Pull ups

Pull ups target mainly your latissimus dorsi (broader upper back) but also the biceps, rhomboids, teres major and infraspinatus (which are all different portions of the upper back), pectoralis major and minor (chest) and external obliques (side portion of abdominal muscles).

I have used the scientific terms for the various muscle groups targeted by the different exercises to illustrate how our bodies are broken down into more muscles than we think. For example, the buttocks are not one muscle but three and each of the three can be trained in different ways.

These five exercises can all be found on YouTube in order to see how they should be performed. Remember, 15 minutes of exercise is better than no minutes at all.

Letshego Zulu. Picture: Supplied

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