Today, I exercised for exactly 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

I’ll tell you why in a second.

But first, a quick reminder that today is the LAST DAY to grab Jen Sinkler’s Lightning and Thunder program at 50% off. It’s everything you need to know about sprinting, moving (and looking!) like an athlete and how to stay safe while getting your midsection ripped up.

You dig?

Great, you can grab your copy here before midnight tonight.

Now, back to the shortest workout ever…

Okay, okay, I did track sprints: 7 sprints, each 150 meters (which is a straight-away and a half), each of which took me about 30s to complete.

So 3 minutes and 30 seconds total.

A side note: I sent you a new track workout yesterday and I got a lot of women responding back saying, “YES! I have been scared to do them, and I kind of dread them, but you always talk about the benefits of sprints, so thank you for this, I am gonna try it!” – I love this! Please respond back and tell me how you did!

If you’re like me 10 years ago, your first response to 3 minutes of exercise is … that’s not even close to enough! WHY EVEN BOTHER?

I’ve written in the past why sprinting is the king of cardio. I’ve also written about the days I was doing 2-3 hours of cardio a day and contrast those days with now and I LITERALLY LOOK THE EXACT SAME.

There’s a trust thing here, though, isn’t there?

This is a mindset shift, away from needing to do more and more cardio, and toward trusting that your body can (and will!) respond to intensity instead of duration.

But it can be mentally hard to give up the long stuff. Long workouts feel like an anchor. At least for me, doing hours of cardio was a control mechanism, it meant that I was in control of my physique and thus in control of my life.

If I skipped workouts or didn’t do enough, I felt like … I don’t know what I felt like! … just that my body would change overnight, I would immediately gain 50 lbs and I wouldn’t be worthy of love, respect and admiration anymore.

Yuck. It feels embarrassing to even admit all that.

But when you’re caught up in the cardio cycle, you don’t even know WHY you have to do so much, you just do. Or else you feel like your world as you know it will implode.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve slowly pulled back, and started trusting myself more. Trusting the process more. And it’s been the most liberating thing—to experience firsthand that my world didn’t in fact blow up, was all the evidence I needed to embrace shorter, more intense exercise.

I used to brag about how long I spent at the gym. Now I brag about how short my workouts are, ha!

But it feels really good to know that 3 minutes and 30 seconds is all I need to maintain my physique (and even get sore as hell in my abs, lawd!).

Why workout for an hour when you can attain the same results in minutes?

I have women all the time tell me they are doing 2 hours of cardio a day just to maintain. How intense can it actually be when it’s 120 minutes of cardio?

I dare you to cut your workouts down to 20-30 minutes, pick up the intensity, and show me that you don’t get just as great results OR BETTER.

Steady-state cardio is old school. Can it be enjoyable? Sure, and that certainly has implications for consistency. But you don’t need it to lose fat or even maintain. Nutrition is of course key, but more exercise is not better. Better, faster, more intense, QUALITY exercise is superior for physique change.

Good bye counting down the minutes. Let’s just count seconds instead🙏🏼

Try the sprint workout I sent you yesterday and let me know how you do!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Xo,

Jill