Our Favorite Four-Minute Workouts

This “four”-themed post is part of our FBG Birthday Week celebration! Check out all of the special four-year birthday posts and huge giveaways here!

We know how busy life is. Heck, we write about fitness all day long and even we sometimes have trouble fitting in a good workout. But guess what? You don’t need an hour to work out. Or even 30 minutes. Or even 10. Every little bit counts. Every. Little. Bit. And we’re here to show you that in even just four minutes, you can have your arse handed to you—in a good way, of course.

As part of FBG Four-Year Birthday celebration, each FBG has put together her favorite four-minute workout and explained it in her own words below. Each a little different, they’re guaranteed to get your heart rate up and your fit bottom working. So what are you waiting for? Get moving! It’s just four minutes…

Four-Minute Workouts to Try

Erin’s Four-Minute Workout: Because this is sometimes all I have time for, I have to maximize it! My go-to moves when I’m in a rush? Squats, with or without a baby for added resistance, depending on his mood. Push-ups: As many as I can handle. Plank: As long as I can. Mix in dance moves and gyrations for added cardio and to get my toddler involved between moves. Repeat for four minutes!

Jenn’s Four-Minute Workout: I’m a big fan of chunking exercises into one-minute intervals because it makes the time fly by. Plus, it’s easy to tell yourself that you can do anything for “one minute,” even if that one minute is jumping lunges. Okay, so my four-minute workout is to do each of these exercises for one minute each: jump rope (if you don’t actually have a jump rope, just pretend that you do!), pull-ups or body rows on a suspension trainer, jumping lunges (if these are too jarring on your knees, go for walking lunges), and ball slams (where you get a big heavy medicine ball that won’t bounce and you throw it down, like you see Jillian do in this video). Have fun…hehe.

Kristen’s Four-Minute Workout: Want a killer four-minute workout? You simply can’t beat an interval run. It’ll get you out of breath in no time, and I promise you’ll feel awesome after! Here’s the plan…

1 minute: Run Moderate (i.e. 10K pace)
1 minute: Run Moderate-Easy (i.e. Half Marathon/Marathon pace)
1 minute: Run Hard (i.e. at LEAST 5K pace, if not closer to a sprint)
1 minute: Run Easy (i.e. recovery, so, jog or even walk to get your heart rate down)

Tish’s Four-Minute Workout: My favorite four-minute workout includes moves that I either love to do or love to do because they’re so darn efficient (read: hard). Do 10 of each and keep going like a banshee for four minutes straight! The moves: burpees, push-ups, mountain climbers and lunges. See? You can be a Mountain Climbing Machine, too!

Of course, if you have more time, you can run through these workouts more than once for as long as you have time for—or you can do each FBG’s four-minute workout back to back for a killer 16-minute sweat-a-thon. Oooh, fun. What is your favorite four-minute workout? —Jenn