Life Kit - This 22-Minute Workout Has Everything You Need

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

If you've got 22 minutes, you can get an effective total-body workout. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's personal trainer Bryant Johnson walks us through an interval session and explains why it's so effective.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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So before you even start this episode, we have two takeaways to help you support public radio. So our first takeaway, LifeKit and other NPR shows are always free to listen to, but they take money to make. If you like the tips LifeKit brings you, please donate to your local public radio station. By donating, you're not just supporting LifeKit, but also all NPR programming and the local journalism in your community. Our second takeaway you can give right now at donate.npr.org slash LifeKit. We're so excited to bring you new episodes next year. In January, we're going to have episodes all about how to start healthy habits, like how to start a creative practice and therapy. And we'll also have episodes on how to quit smoking, how to drink less, even how to quit your job. So again, to give,

visit donate.npr.org slash life kit and thanks. Okay, on to the episode. This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Alison Aubrey. All right, how many do I need to do? I need for you to at least give me a baker's dozen. All right, 13. You got it. 13. Inhale and blow away. 13. Good. And 12. If you are ready to commit to working out but don't know where to start. Good, and 10. 9. We have got you covered.

We're going to give you the essentials to an effective workout. Looking good. 6. I only want 5 more. 5. With certified trainer Bryant Johnson, who happens to be the trainer to a pretty famous woman, a Supreme Court justice. The notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or as I call her, Justice Ginsburg. And Bryant does not cut her any slack. Or, for that matter, me either. Good and up.

That makes it a little harder. You didn't think you was just going to get me here just for nothing, did you? You act like the justices ain't doing the workout. Yeah. Like the justices ain't doing the workout. In this episode, we'll walk you through a full body workout you can do at home in just 22 minutes. And trust me, it's going to kick your butt. It kicked mine. This message comes from Subaru and the 2025 Forester SUV.

Offering a completely restyled exterior, including a bold new grille, trim accents, and powerful design contours. It's the first Forester to receive an 11.6-inch Starlink multimedia interface with 8.7 inches of ground clearance, available 19-inch alloy wheels, symmetrical all-wheel drive, and raised roof rails to add function and style. The Subaru Forester. Love begins with trust. What's in store for the music, TV, and film industries for 2025? We don't know, but we're making some fun, bold predictions for the new year. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. I'm Alison Aubrey, and I cover health and wellness here at NPR.

And in this episode, we're going to have four key takeaways about how to get more bang for your buck when you work out and why it matters. All you really need is 22 minutes to get it all in. You can get a fantastic workout in 22 minutes. That's Tim Church. He's a physician who's published a whole bunch of studies on exercise. At some level, I think if it's taking you more than 22 minutes, you might be doing the wrong workout. So why 22 minutes? The official recommendation is that we need about 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. So divide that by seven and boom, you got 21.42 minutes or round it up to 22 minutes. We're going to break that down into 10 minutes of cardio,

eight minutes of weight training, and four minutes of stretching. And Tim's going to explain what each part of our workout is doing for us while Bryant walks us through how to do them. In 22 minutes, I can have you go from head to toe all the way down. And before you realize it, you may want to do more than 22 minutes. And Bryant says don't even think about starting in with your excuses. RBG doesn't complain. And I've actually had people come to me and they would say, well, I'm just too old to do it. I'm like, well, she's 85. And they'll be like, well, you know what? I got this bad back. And I'm like,

you know, she's been through cancer twice. What's her excuse now? If RBG can find time to work out, so can you. And if you keep with these exercises, you might be as active and healthy into your 80s. Now, Tim and Bryant are going to be our two guides here. If you're following along with us at home, let's start with a five-minute cardio warm-up. We're going to start with the treadmill. I'm going to increase the speed a little bit. Now you want to do it to where it's comfortable for you right now. What we want to do is we want to get moving for five minutes. In the next few minutes, I want to tell you about the absolute best trick in the book, and I mean it. This could help you completely rethink your

workout. You could actually cut your workout time in half. Now the term to remember here is HIT. That stands for High Intensity Interval Training. The purest form of high intensity interval training is simply that, it's intervals. You're going to have a short warm-up. You're going to hit interval really hard. Maybe you sprint for 20 seconds or cycle your heart out for a minute. Then you're going to rest. And then you hit that 20 seconds again and you go all out. Then you're going to rest, hit another interval really hard. Then you're going to rest. HIIT helps you have a very efficient workout because you're getting a lot of work in in a

short period of time. You're stimulating more physiological pathways. You're stimulating more muscles. So both from a health perspective and potentially from a weight perspective, you're getting more benefit that just going at a leisurely pace won't do. Like a turbo boost. Turbo boost is a great analogy. You can do these kinds of intervals on any kind of equipment or if you're out running or power walking. And if you're following along, this is one of two five-minute bouts of cardio. You want to do the second chunk after your weight training, which means that this workout has only 10 minutes of cardio total, which is kind of a strange concept for me. You know, here's what I

wanted to ask you. I, you know, used to be a long-distance runner. I've run marathons, and I have this built-in, you know, sort of bias that I'm not really working out until I get I don't know 20 or 30 minutes of cardio and here you are telling me that I just need 10 minutes of cardio and I can call it a day so here's why interval training is so good or why it helps to burn calories a lot faster I like to break it down like this if you are getting a car what has better gas mileage? Highway mileage or city mileage? I think it's highway.

Highway mileage. Why is highway mileage so good? Because it's a steady state. You're going a nice, easy 55 miles an hour constantly. All right. City mileage burns more gas. What is city driving? Stop, go, stop, go.

Stop, go, stop, go. Oh, wait a minute. What is interval? Fast, slow, fast, slow. Stop, go, stop, go. So interval training is kind of like city miles? Exactly. And if you need more evidence, get this. There's actually research that shows, compared to people who just work out at a steady pace, interval training can lead to more weight loss. Now, it's complicated, but one thing scientists have found is that these sprint-like exercises seem to help our bodies produce more catecholamines. What is a catecholamine, you ask? Well, these are hormones that can send a signal to our fat cells. It's as if the hormone is saying, hey, fat cell, release your fat. So interval training is efficient. It's effective.

What more could you want? I may put a little incline on it. No, but I can feel it. My heart rate is going up. That's okay. I guess thank you. Should I be thanking you for that? Exactly.

So we're going to make this easy. We're going to be easy like Sunday morning. Okay, now that we've got the cardio down, you've got to get in some weight training. So tip number two, resistance training is a must. For starters, it helps you prevent injury, and that's at any age. And here's a little bit of fear, because, you know, fear's a good motivator. If you get in the habit now, you can actually prevent this. From age 40 or 50 on, you lose 1% to 2% of your muscle mass a year.

Maintaining muscle mass, maintaining strength is absolutely critical to quality of life, to healthy aging. Whether you're chasing grandkids, carrying your luggage, going duck hunting, or even just trying to get yourself dressed, all these things require strength. And it's the ultimate use it or lose it. So as you get kind of north of 40, you really need to counter the body's natural inclination to lose muscle and lose strength. The only way to counter that is through strength training.

What we're going to do is we're going to do some things real quick. We're going to do three exercises. For the strength training part of our workout, we're going to do three exercises, push-ups, squats, and something called a row. We'll do it about a dozen repetitions each for three rounds. Okay, we're going to start off with push-up. I know I can't do a push-up. Guess what? We're going to do push-ups against the wall. So what I want you to do is walk and find a wall. This is in the no excuse category. This is no excuse. If you can't do a push-up, we're just, I got my hands against the wall here.

I want your feet to be shoulder width apart. I want you to be about a foot or so away from the wall. I'm going to come up and I'm going to be on my toes. Now I'm leaning up against the wall on the toes. Now the only thing I'm going to do is bend the elbows, bring my face to the wall, inhale, and push it back. If that's too easy... Guess what? You can take it down on the ground. Take it down on the floor.

You can do push-ups on the floor, on your knees, or off your knees. Inhale as you go. Good. And bring it up. Nice and easy. Good job. Relax. I felt that. Oh, yes. And when it comes to weight training, push-ups pack in so much. They work your shoulders, your back, your chest. Probably one of the better exercises because guess what?

While you're in that push-up position, you're really in a modified plank. Now you're engaging your core. As you go down as one unit, your core has to be tight. Engage, contracting the back. As you push back, now you're contracting the chest, and now you're stretching the back. Next in your strength training circuit. I want you to sit down. So find you a chair, a bench, or whatever. All right. Stand back up. Sit back down. Stand back up.

This is a trick. Sit back down. Stand back up. Sit back down. Stand back up. You got me. Sit back down. Good, and relax. Okay, guess what we just did? That was the art of distraction? No, it was not. I've had people tell me, I can't do squats. I said, really? So have a seat, sit down, now stand up. Guess what? That was a squat. If you want to make it a little tougher, try squats with your hands out while holding some water bottles just to add some weight,

or take one leg off the ground. That'll get you. You see, weight training doesn't have to mean lifting barbells. I personally despise that feel of cold metal. I just don't like it. The machines are scary to me. So squats like these are perfect. Now, squats do a few things. They work your core, your hamstrings. They get your heart rate up. And they combat the bad effects of sitting all day. This whole idea of sitting for a living, it's a very recent phenomenon in the history of mankind. So Tim Church actually crunched the numbers on this. He looked at the amount of physical activity the average American burns during the workday. And compared to 1960, workers typically burn about 150 fewer calories a day, all because of our office jobs.

The real danger to sitting is prolonged sitting, sitting bouts, where you sit down and you don't get up for like two hours or three hours. If you can break up those bouts, if you can get up every half hour, every 40 minutes, every 45 minutes, That really reduces the risk associated with sitting. Living an active lifestyle outside of work is now more important than ever. And the last quick strength building exercise, this one is for your arms and your chest. And all you need is a towel and something sturdy like a banister. I wrap the towel around a banister or something right here. I'm leaning back. Okay, so just to be clear about what we're doing here, you've wrapped the towel around something fixed,

like a banister or a column. You hold the ends of the towel, one in each hand, with your hands at about chest level. Now lean back until the towel is completely taut, so the towel is sort of supporting your body weight. So I'm really holding on to this towel. If I let go of this towel, I will fall onto the floor. Then slowly pull yourself forward. And now lean back. Pull forward and back. That's called a row, kind of

like you're rowing a boat. Now the moment you do any of these strength training exercises, the row, the squats, the push-ups, you are engaging that core. So no need to do those abdominal crunches. I know I hate them. The core supports everything. Supports your ribcage, supports your posture. It also helps decrease osteoporosis. Prevent injury, I'm imagining. Definitely prevent injury. It'll take about eight minutes to do three rounds of these. And when it comes to weight training

and how much you need, the recommendations are a little fuzzy. The official advice is to get weight training in a couple of times a week, but more can be better. What's next? Well, you haven't done that. You've only done one set. Oh, all right. We got three more sets to do. I'm ready. All right, so let's go. Next set. So just to recap here, we did five minutes of cardio, eight minutes of weight training. If you're following along at home, now's the time to get five more minutes of cardio intervals. And that brings us to the last part of the workout. Tip number three, don't skip the stretching.

All right, now I'm back to weight. Let's take the hands up over the head. Lean back. Looking up, stretching out. Good. Again, let's take it over to the side. Lean it over to the side. Lean it over to the side. It's a good way to close your workout,

to take notice of just how good you feel and why you want to work out again tomorrow. And it's also a way of calming the muscles down, calming the nervous system down, getting back into that hum. You know, stretching is important. Bryant says you want to aim to be the bamboo tree, not an oak tree. Here's what he means by that.

The more flexible you are, the stronger you are. This is my example I always like to use. How does that work? That always seems counterintuitive to me. Oak tree, bamboo tree. Which one's the strongest? Oak, bamboo. Oak, bamboo. Think about it. Bamboos are skinny and tall and they grow quickly. Very flexible.

And we use them to make hardwood floors and oak trees are big. And they stand and they don't move. And then when a storm comes, the oak tree stands there and holds it. And the pressure, and then it breaks under pressure. The bamboo, as the pressure comes, you bend, you adjust, then you stand up and you're still standing. Okay, so I want to be bamboo. Yes, you want to be more flexible. So here are a few quick stretches. You really don't have to overthink this. I mean, for starters,

just sit down on the ground. I want you to bring up the bottoms of your feet together and pull it, grab by the ankles and pull it in. And then I want you to have your elbows to the inside of your legs and I want you to push down. Got it. We're kind of in like in a butterfly or groin stretch. Is that right? Yes, butterfly groin stretch. Then we're going to stand the right leg out. Bring that left leg in. This is going to be a hamstring stretch. And then you want to switch sides. Bryant says 10 seconds is long enough to hold it. I love that 10 seconds is enough. I think a lot of times people resist stretching because it seems like it takes a lot of time. It's boring. It doesn't really feel great when you first start out. It doesn't. And it is.

I'm just being honest. It is. But the payoff is there. Yes. And here's the thing. I just want you to show up and let's just do something. I think in today's world, given that we all sit down so much, stretching is a lot more important than it probably was in the past. Just to lengthen those ligaments, those tendons, those muscles, because we sit in this locked position all day long. So from that side of it, there's clearly some benefit. And that's really all it takes to get it in. A 22-minute HIIT circuit of warm-up, weight training, a few more minutes of cardio intervals, and stretching. And now that you're feeling good, hang on to this and repeat daily, or as often as you can, because exercise really is medicine.

I've spent my whole life, career, studying exercise and named the health benefit, you know, depression, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension. And there's one thing that just has blown me away from day one. And that is the benefits to the head. I'm absolutely convinced 95% of the benefits of exercise are above the shoulders. Some of the benefits of exercise to the brain is reduced anxiety, reduced depression, better treatment of depression of individuals with depression, reduced risk of Alzheimer's, slowing the progression of Alzheimer's in individuals who have Alzheimer's, reduced risk of Parkinson's.

There just are so many benefits to the brain. And each year we learn more and more. And as if that's not enough, there is another thing to keep in mind. Every time you exercise, you can improve your blood sugar control, which can help prevent disease in the long term and can also help keep your mood stable. The number one place you store blood sugar is in your muscles. When you exercise or when you're physically active for the next 24 to 72 hours, your muscle is using more blood sugar. Where you really see this is in individuals with type 2 diabetes.

If they get about a physical activity in that day, they will use less medication over the next day or two. The skeletal muscle wants to chew up blood sugar. It chews up the most blood sugar when it's happy. It's happy when you're working it, when you're exercising. So look, we could go on and on about it, how great exercise is for you, but it only counts if you do it. Here's how Bryant likes to talk about it, and I really like this. I remember I told my mother one time she wanted to start exercising and she retired,

and I said, Mom, I love you dearly. I said, but I cannot care more about you than you care about yourself. So what I tell people is just figure it out. If you want to do something, then just do it. Just take that first step. All right, so we've done what we needed to do. We did the cardio check, the weight training check, and the stretching. Just remember these takeaways.

Tip number one, high intensity interval training is the fastest way to do the most. Tip number two, move some weight, whether it's your body weight or some free weights. This really is crucial to preventing injury. Number three, be like bamboo. Get in a few minutes of stretching to stay strong. And tip number four, exercise really is medicine. For more NPR Life Kit, check out our other episodes. I've hosted some on how to get better sleep and how to get more bang for your buck when you exercise. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And while you're there, subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss anything. And here, as always, is a completely

random tip, this time from science correspondent Richard Harris. I took a survival course when I was on a reporting trip to Antarctica some years ago, and I learned that it's easier to stay warm than it is to get warm. And that's good advice in any cold climate. And we want to hear from you. Have you used a LifeKit tip in your life? Email your story to us at lifekit at npr.org or tweet us at NPR LifeKit. This episode was edited by Carmel Roth. Megan Cain is the managing producer.

Beth Donovan is the senior editor. Our digital editor is Beck Harland. And our project coordinator is Claire Schneider. Music digital editor is Beck Harland, and our project coordinator is Claire Schneider. Music by Nick Dupre and Brian Gerhart. Neil Carruth is our general manager of podcasts, and the senior vice president of programming is Anya Grunman. I'm Alison Aubrey. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Grammarly. 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority. The right choice is crucial,

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