….Because who doesn’t love saving time while doing more.

Your workouts don’t have to include the fanciest, newest, or an extreme amount of exercises. If you focus on complex and compound movements you will be working more muscles in one movement than you could in a few simple movements.

What is a compound movement? An exercise that uses more than one muscle group and also moves more than one joint 

–For example: A squat to press works your shoulders, glutes, quads, hamstrings, and core while working with the shoulder, hip, elbow, and knee joints. W0ah that’s a lot of action in one movement!

If you want to dig deeper than that we can look into the different planes of movements to add a whole new level of intensity!

Sagittal plane: divides the body into left and right halves.

• Movements done in this plane is the squat because it does not break the plane by moving side to side. Another, more simple exercise in this plane is a bicep curl, again because it does not break the center plane and only moves up and down rather than side to side

Frontal plane: divides the body into front and back halves

• Movements done in this plane are shoulder presses because the work up and down but not forward and back (unlike the bicep curl) therefore they do not break the plane

Transverse plane: divides the body into top and bottom halves

• Movement done in this plane is a horizontal woodchop because the movement works across the body and up (breaking both the frontal and sagittal planes) but does not work below the waist therefore not breaking the up and down plane.

All talk of planes can be kind of confusing, but don’t worry I have you covered! The following exercises work in multiple joints, multiple planes and with multiple muscle groups – talk about a full body workout!

So how about you take these 6 exercises for a spin. Attach 8-10 reps per exercise and put a time limit on (15,20,30 minutes) and go to work! The goal is to work efficiently, work hard on the exercise you are working on, take minimal breaks between exercises and save your rest periods for in between rounds and see how many rounds you can do! (Otherwise known as ARMAP).

Video exercises (in order)

Burpee pull up

• Muscles: chest, triceps, core, lats, traps, shoulders, biceps
• Joints: shoulder, hips, knees, elbow
• Planes: transverse, sagittal, frontal

Squat to press:

• Muscles: shoulders, glutes, quads, hamstrings, core
• Joint: shoulder, elbow, hip, knee
• Planes: sagittal and frontal

Chest fly to skullcrusher:

• Muscles: chest, triceps, shoulders
• Joints: shoulder, elbow
• Planes: frontal, sagittal

Double bent over row to deadlift

• Muscles: traps, lats, biceps, shoulders, low back, glutes, quads, hamstrings
• Joints: shoulder, elbow, hip, knee
• Planes: sagittal, frontal, transverse (a mixture really)

TRX lunge to chest fly

• Muscles: chest, tricep, shoulder, core, quads, glutes
• Joints: shoulder, hip, knee
• Planes: transverse, sagittal, frontal

GHD sit up

• Muscles: core, quads
• Joints, hip, knee
• Planes: sagittal, transverse