There are a few common reasons people give up on workout routines. They’re boring. There’s not enough time in the day. They get too challenging too quickly. If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone.
The reality is that the majority of people who set a fitness goal abandon it within the first month—depending on which survey you look at, anywhere between 50 to 90 percent of people!
But EMOM workouts could be the solution to your workout woes and the motivating option that keeps you sticking with your routine.
EMOM might remind you of some other acronym-named workout options, such as HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or AMRAP (as many reps as possible). But where EMOM, short for “every minute, on the minute,” differs is that it doesn’t require you to push yourself to the point of exhaustion. Measuring your heartrate in the case of HIIT or repeating a move until fatigue stops you from doing any more in the case of AMRAP are excellent options if you have big goals. But if you just want to stay healthy? EMOM could be more approachable and, therefore, easier to embrace.
Here’s how it works: As the name suggests, you begin an exercise at the start of a minute, and as soon as you finish, you have time to rest until the next minute starts. So, you could start a timer for 10 minutes, and every minute you have to do 10 squats or 10 pushups. By the end of 10 minutes, you’ve done 10 sets of these exercises. You could do a set of the same exercise over and over again for 10 minutes, or you could mix it up and work a different muscle group every minute.
Sounds simple enough, right? The thing you have to remember is that there’s no guaranteed rest time between your sets. You have to move quickly, which can up the intensity of the workout. If you finish the set in 30 seconds, you have 30 seconds to rest. Finishing the set of moves in 20 seconds could be a little more challenging, but the tradeoff is you get an extra 10 seconds of rest.
Some of the benefits of EMOM workouts are:
- They’re efficient. Because you’re working under a time constraint, you’re not going to procrastinate or goof off. This is especially good if you’ve been putting off a workout because you’re busy—you’ll be amazed at what you can get done in 10 minutes.
- They’re adaptable. You can combine whatever exercises you want to, and you can aim to do as many of each move per minute as you want to aim for. You could do an upper-, lower-, or full-body workout. You could take it easy or go hard.
- They’re interesting. No two workout sessions are going to be the same because you’re constantly mixing it up.
- They’re great for measuring progress. You might notice that it gets easier to do 10 of a certain move in 30 seconds and feel ready to push it up to 15 or 20 of that move.
So, what sort of moves work well in a EMOM workout? Start with this plan below—do an exercise every minute, on the minute, for 10 minutes. Then adapt to your own goals. To build overall strength, add more weight and use fewer reps, or to build endurance, focus on doing more reps faster:
- 10 dumbbell squats
- 10 pushups
- 10 squats
- 10 bicycle crunches
- 10 burpees
- 10 hip thrusts
- 10 kettlebell swings
- 10 lunges
- 20 jumping jacks
- 20 mountain climbers
