Add 10 minutes of fitness to your day

People often wonder why I picked 10 minutes as a daily fitness goal. Why not 30? Or an hour? Isn’t 10 minutes too short to really make a difference? The answer is no, and I'll show you why:

1. Simplicity and Consistency

Three of the biggest mistakes I see from people building a fitness program for the first time are that they are convinced they need to go somewhere to exercise; thinking that anything less than an hour sweating "doesn't count"; and not working out consistently enough to feel great. Ten minutes of fitness can put an end to each common mistake.

I started the SparkPeople program as a busy and stressed corporate employee at one of America’s top companies. I didn't have time to do much outside of work so exercise was definitely out of the question. That is, until I reframed my thinking. Any able-bodied, mostly healthy person can find at least 10 minutes most days to consistently exercise if they want to make it a priority. An effective program is one that makes it more likely people will actually stick with it. I recommend that you base your program on simple exercises that anyone can do at home and then make other activities (like going to the gym or on a run) more like fun extra credit.

2. The Getting-Started Trick

Often, just getting started is the most difficult part about exercising, both for beginners and experienced exercisers. If you tell yourself that you only need to do 10 minutes, it makes "getting started" dramatically easier than if you think you need to get through a full hour of exercise. With HIIT, tabata and circuit work, the concept of the 60-minute workout is changing quickly.

Once you do get started, you have two options: First, you can stop at 10 minutes and be happy that you truly and honestly met your goal while keeping your streak alive if you're striving for 10 minutes every day. The second option is to keep going. I can guarantee you there will be many days that once you get started, you’ll end up doing 15, 20, 30 minutes or even more because you are actually enjoying yourself! This "trick" still works on me today, in fact. Half the battle is won when you show up for yourself.

3. Make it a Streak

A low "hurdle" of only 10 minutes makes it easy to build a streak around this program. Not only is a streak incredibly rewarding as you see the number of days you've exercised climb higher and higher, but it's also a great way to understand how your body progresses and gets stronger. By exercising a little bit every day, you can build consistency and visualize your goals more clearly.

4. Set and Reach Goals

One of the most important parts of this program is that you aren’t just exercising—you are also learning to set and reach one small goal at a time, which builds your momentum. Visualize the snowball from a cartoon rolling downhill getting bigger and faster as momentum builds. We hear from so many people who say they have lost all hope that they can reach goals. Not so with SparkPeople.

Eventually the skill of reaching small goals from this program will give you an incredible amount of self-confidence and hope that you can reach your most meaningful long-term goals in life. Fueled by the feel-good vibes from hitting a new PR on the track or lifting the next heaviest dumbbell, your results will then "crisscross" into reaching goals in other areas of life. This combination of fitness plus goal-setting guarantees that you will improve both physically and mentally.

5. Connect to You Bigger Goals

An important aspect of this process is to keep in mind your most meaningful goals in life. Understand and believe that being healthy and fit will make it more likely that you will reach those goals, no matter if they're related to your health, work, relationships or personal growth. Once you understand and believe this, then this program will be both simple and meaningful—an incredibly powerful combination that could make you unstoppable. Then, every time you exercise or even think about getting started, you can visualize your goals to get you moving and keep you moving!

6. You Will Probably Average More Than 10 Minutes

I allude to this in the point above. I follow this program now and am currently have a streak of 141 days of doing 10+ fitness minutes, but I also keep track of my average minutes per day and the current average is about 50 minutes per day. After all, once you're in your workout clothes, feeling your workout playlist and starting to sweat, you want those feel-good endorphins to keep pumping!

While I am, admittedly, an advanced exerciser, these results are not atypical. Once you build your consistency and actually start to enjoy working out more (I promise this is very likely to happen!), you will consciously or unconsciously start tacking on extra minutes to your workout. Shoot for somewhere around 30 minutes most days as a good base level, knowing that many days you can have less than this and that is all part of the plan.

7. No Excuses

It’s almost impossible to say that you can’t find 10 minutes most days of the week at home to do some form of activity or exercise. Even if you just do squats or biceps curls with a can while watching TV, finding the time is all about determination and a go-getter mindset. This statement isn’t meant to sound like a drill sergeant as one reader thought; instead, it means that the design of the program intentionally removes the most common obstacles to consistent fitness.

8. Makes Your Life Like a Game

Many people drift through life with the days, weeks, months and years slowly slipping by without having much of a real destination. When I started setting goals around this simple 10-minute fitness program, I noticed that my life felt like a game—I worked to reach new levels, build skills and had real fun along the way. There is even real science behind this: When I reached my 10-minute goal and later increased my streak, the accomplishment gave my brain a hit of dopamine, otherwise known as the "pleasure" neurotransmitter, which made me want more of that feeling. I realized that instead of escaping reality to play video games, I had the power to make my ongoing real life more like a fun game. Instead of watching adventure stories on TV, I could make my own life an adventure! Soon, you’ll start looking for other ways you can incorporate fun challenges and make your life a game.

Now you can see that the 10+ fitness minutes strategy is a simple, but powerful combination of a smart fitness program and the power of goal-setting (and other aspects of behavioral psychology). Even though it doesn’t sound exciting, consistency really is a key. So since "consistency" doesn’t sound exciting, we figured out fun and exciting ways to help you stay consistent (like streaks!).

9. You'll Effortlessly Reach Your Fitness Tipping Point 

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: At the beginning of an exercise program, you do put in more energy than the benefits you get back from all your hard work. It doesn't seem fair, no, and, justifiably, it makes people think fitness isn't worth their time. When people hear that exercise makes you feel great (which it does!), many people go in too hard from the start, leaving them feeling sore, exhausted or even hurt, none of which leads to adherence. It's at this point that people often quit or get into a cycle of "yo-yo fitness" in which you get in shape, fall off the wagon and have to start over at square one.

When you engage in a well-designed fitness program consistently, though, this equation flip-flops and eventually the benefits you receive vastly outweigh the effort you're putting forth. Adding in short, doable, 10-minute workouts allows you to build a solid foundation one day at a time until you can achieve that fitness tipping point. 

It took me many years of experimenting to figure out this formula, which has changed my life and the lives of so many others. Now, you can learn it in a few minutes of reading and then put it into action, much like these two members who have had amazing results in just 10 minutes a day:

"It is working for me! Ten minutes exercising first thing in the morning has now increased to 20 minutes. The exercise propels me to a better start to my day. My attitude and stress management abilities have both improved. I now consume half the amount of coffee as I did before I began exercising in the morning and I eat a nutritious breakfast. Did I mention I am not a morning person? Maybe I should say that I used to not be a morning person." RETAT60