The real 4 minute workout that works

Corona pandemic has been a crazy ride so far. A lot of craziness has been going on all around us.

And not just that, a lot of craziness has come out from within us .! really.

Take the “home workout” fantasies for example.

I mean, who hasn’t looked in the mirror and pulled their slabs of jelly belly together, jiggled it and looked it in the eye thinking tomorrow I will sweat it out and all sins shall be washed.

we all know what happens the next morning. If only your alarm could swear..! or your bed could kick you out of itself, they would tell an honest tale.

reading this post isn’t really helping so far, right? now it will.

So, this above description was a little page pulled out from my glorious life. What happened next that I started following this dude called Jordan Syatt. He is fitness trainer from the US of A and spreads his seeds of motivation and inspiration via Instagram and his newsletter.

In one email, he sent a workout schedule lasting 20 minutes with 5 exercises which can be easily done at home. So my math-challenged brain figured that 5 exercises in 20 minutes mean approximately 4 minutes per exercise. With a rest of a minute or two in between, it can be made into a nice 30-minute session.

This changed everything.

I saw that for those 4 minutes I was laser-sharp focused on doing the workout in top shape form and intensity. As soon as the alarm timer hit 4, I would start the rest timer of 1 minute and then once that ended, again another session of 4 minutes.

so the workout looked somewhat like this :

4 minute – exercise
1 minute – break
4 minute – exercise
1 minute – break
repeat x  5 times (or till you’ve earned your food)

What was happening.! I was really enjoying doing this .! mix it with some fast music and I was actually looking forward to my workout – what sorcery was that..!

so, here is what happened.

We, humans, are very short-sighted by nature. We tend to value reward that is nearer to us more than what is further away from us, even if it is better. Read more about Hyperbolic discounting here.

And you can pick my head here and here.

therefore, in the 4-minute workout session I was only hooked on the reward that I was going to get, much sooner, than a long and laid out 40-minute workout session that one conventionally tries to follow, fails, and never gets anywhere with their goals.

This little psychological trick is what I wanted to share with you in this post. It works really well when you are on your own, at home, when no ones watching or standing on your head to sweat it out.

Four minutes is the least you can promise yourself. Right? right.!

So let’s get kicking.

thanks for reading,

I’ll see you in the next one.

Awesome video of the week  :