In a world where the demands of deadlines, long commutes, and loved ones in need of dinner loom alongside the pervasive myth that exercising for less than an hour isn’t worth the trouble, speedy workouts that truly work are a blessing.

Welcome to our six-move circuit, which can expand from just six minutes to 12 or 18 to suit your schedule and fitness level. High on intensity, low on equipment, and variable in impact, this workout is designed with the time-crunched in mind. But the benefits far exceed the convenience.

Fast workouts improve power — your ability to complete a lot of work in a short period of time — says workout designer Artemis Scantalides, founder of Iron Body Training Systems in Las Vegas. And power, she explains, is an oft-neglected skill essential to both athletics and everyday life, whether you’re chasing down a forehand shot or running to catch a bus.

Power training is also useful for burning fat, improving cardio capacity, and training fast-twitch muscle fibers, which dictate strength improvements and build muscle mass.

Scantalides created this workout around time constraints rather than a prescribed number of reps. In this way, you’ll work as hard as you can (with great form, of course) for a set amount of time, and then you’ll rest briefly before moving again.

A single round takes six minutes, but if you have the time and energy to do more, you can add rounds as your fitness and schedule allow.

If you choose to count your reps, you can try to increase them from round to round or workout to workout. Or you can choose not to count reps at all and simply do your best. Rest assured that you’re getting fitter anyway — six minutes at a time.

Directions

Select the appropriate work period, rest period, and number of rounds for your workout from the chart above. Beginner exercisers will use a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio. More experienced exercisers will spend more time working and less time resting within each minute of the workout.

Begin with a short, dynamic warm-up (such as the one at The Perfect Warm-Up) or spend five minutes on a cardio machine of your choice.

Then, when you’re ready, start a timer (or use an exercise-timing app like Rounds or a clock with a second hand) and complete as many good-form reps as possible of the first exercise for the duration of the selected work period. Rest for the remainder of the minute and then move on to the next move. Complete exercises 1 through 6 in order, then return to exercise 1 to begin again, if desired.

Repeat until you’ve completed the chosen number of rounds, resting the same amount of time between rounds as between exercises.

To progress over time, try to complete more reps of each move each time you do the workout. You can do this in one of two ways:

1) Go faster within the same work period without sacrificing great form. For instance, if you complete 10 burpees in 30 seconds your first week, try for 12 reps in that same amount of time in your second week.

2) Progress to a longer work period; the tradeoff is less time to rest between rounds.

Cultures that routinely wear shoes have higher incidences of foot deformities and pain than cultures that go barefoot, says podiatrist Paul Langer. In an ideal world, we’d all be safe and comfortable walking around barefoot all the time, he says. And while there are some ways to increase time without shoes, very few of us can reasonably give them up completely. With that reality in mind, here are some of our experts’ top tips for minimizing the adverse effects of shoes.

Beware of lifted heels. Many shoes, including running shoes, are designed to prop your heel up. “It’s like you’re standing on a ramp,” explains perfor­mance physiotherapist Mike Gauvreau, and it ultimately changes the way you move.

High heels and even athletic shoes with a lift, such as supportive sneakers and weightlifting shoes, place your ankles and calves in a shortened position, ultimately creating more tension. This can cause trouble with extended use. Save dress shoes with higher heels for special occasions, and limit the use of athletic shoes with a lift by mixing in lower- and no-heeled sneakers.

Steer clear of flip-flops. “Shoes that make your foot hold on — instead of the shoe holding on to your foot — create tight, stiff feet,” says Lynn Shuck, an Eischens Yoga teacher based in Minneapolis. This can result in plantar fasciitis, tight hamstrings, and back pain, among other issues. Choose shoes that have a secure heel strap or well-fitting enclosed heel.

Avoid crowding your toes. Many shoes are too narrow — especially in the toe box — and compress your tarsal and metatarsal bones (the toes and the bones in your forefoot). If you compress your feet long enough, your mobility becomes limited, says Shuck. “If I’d worn gloves on my hands for 50-plus years, they wouldn’t move much. That’s what we’ve done with our feet.” Again, high heels and dress shoes are often the culprits, if they have a narrow toe box. Look for shoes with ample width so your toes can flex.

Don’t go soft. Shoes are often packed with cushioning, which actually weakens your feet over time, and the lack of sensory feedback alters your walking mechanics. Every time your foot hits the ground, it receives signals from the ground via nerve fibers. If you’re wearing shoes with thick padding, your feet need to land harder to pick up that feedback, and you’ll be less mindful of how you’re interacting with the ground. But if your feet are minimally cushioned, you’ll be more aware of how you’re walking. “You’ll wind up walking more naturally and efficiently,” Gauvreau says.

Avoid the quick fix. Runners are ­especially susceptible to developing pain as a result of their footwear. Interestingly, research suggests that the best way to minimize your risk of foot pain and injury is to choose running shoes based on comfort, as opposed to shoes that “fix” a biomechanical problem.

Runners may be familiar with this scenario: You visit a running store to have your gait assessed. The assessor determines your degree of pronation, or how far your foot rolls inward with each step. If you’re an overpronator, you land on the inside of your foot; if you’re an underpronator, you land on the outside. Neutral pronators land in the middle. The salesperson will recommend a shoe to resolve it, thus helping you avoid injury.

Sounds reasonable, but research has shown that this approach has no effect on injury prevention. A 2015 study of running injuries found no conclusive evidence that pronation had any effect on running-related injuries. Instead, the research authors suggest two alternative models for selecting shoes to mitigate injury risk: the comfort filter and the preferred movement pattern.

Choosing a shoe based on comfort will enable you to maintain your preferred movement pattern, reducing the risk of injury, a model first proposed by biomechanics expert and lead study author Benno Nigg, PhD.

“Our movement patterns are as unique as our signature,” explains Langer, “and anything that causes us to deviate from our preferred movement pattern will cause us to work harder, be less metabolically efficient, fatigue sooner, and increase our risk of injury.”

If you are free of foot pain, he recommends choosing running shoes based on what feels right: “Since comfort and movement patterns are very complex and can’t be measured, we recommend that people try shoes on, make comparisons, and then select the most comfortable shoe.”

This originally appeared as “Choosing the Best Shoes” in “The Best Foot Forward” in the January-February 2019 print issue of Experience Life.

For many of us, the New Year brings a fresh start — an opportunity to get a new outlook on life. But it also brings a predictable flood of warmed-over media messages and “no-fail” plans that fail to deliver.

So in this installment of The Living Experiment, we talk about the paradoxical nature of the New Year experience, and how you can make it work for you.

Whether it’s opting out of fad diets and workouts or embracing the long-standing tradition of reflecting on your right-now priorities, we encourage you to investigate your desires for change and the motivations behind them.

We share expert theories about why our goals tend to elude us and offer experiments to help you identify and embrace the New Year adjustments that matter to you.

Year-End Depletion

• Coming off the holiday season, we are often tired, depleted, and vulnerable to being sold on dramatic solutions and interventions.
• The media and marketers seize on this opportunity with aggressive campaigns that tap into our feelings of inadequacy and shame.
• Buying into the constant exhortations to have “your best year ever!” or “your best body ever!” can backfire, fueling magical thinking — or cynicism and apathy.
• The biggest challenges to making sustainable change typically require shifting time and resources away from current outflows and renegotiating current commitments, not just pushing yourself harder.

The Value of Preparation

• Seasonally speaking, the dead of winter is a great time for contemplation, reflection, review, and planning, but not necessarily the best time to spring into action.
• Consider, without jumping to solutions or resolutions: What parts of your life are calling for change, and where are you being invited to grow as a person?
• It’s also worth asking, with self-compassion: Why have you not already made or sustained this change? Hint: It’s not lack of willpower.
• Locate your current position on the Readiness to Change spectrum. Know that it’s normal to repeatedly move back and forth between the stages of contemplation, preparation, and action.

Investigative Insight

• Rather than making a long list of “shoulds,” consider focusing on one important area and working through a deeper change process (see the experiments below).
• Can you reframe your perceived problems (e.g., weight, debt, bad habits) as symptoms of underlying challenges? Often, these come down to excess stress, competing values or commitments, vague boundaries, or unaddressed psycho-emotional issues.
• Self-sabotage of our goals is often based on dissonance between our current identity and the behaviors required of the person we want to be.
• Consider trying on your chosen capability or habit, even if you don’t feel ready to fully embrace it. Taking a small step or running a small experiment can help you incrementally shift your identity to match that behavior.
• Finish the sentence “I am a person who . . . ” as though you have already made your chosen change. Notice: How does that feel in your body-mind?
• Keep in mind that change is inherently disruptive. Short-term chaos is often the first step toward long-term joy.

Experiments

Pilar suggests:
1) Make an Immunity Map by following the steps in the article “How to Overcome Immunity to Change” (available at “How to Overcome Immunity to Change“).

2) Create a Goal Flower using the “Cultivate Your Goals” section of Pilar’s Refine Your Life workbook (available at ­PilarGerasimo.com/resources).

Dallas suggests: Look at the changes you want to make for 2019, and articulate the motivation behind them. Ask yourself: Am I doing this out of fear or out of love? Replace a behavior that has typically been fear-based with one done out of love. It may be the same action, but with a different motivation in play.

Listen and Learn: Check out this and other episodes of The Living Experiment podcast at LivingExperiment.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher.

It’s hard to work out simply for the sake of it. No matter how much you enjoy your fitness regimen (and I sincerely hope you at least sometimes find pleasure in exercise), it’s easy to put off a gym sessionuntil tomorrow, until next week, until January 1.

You might go to bed telling yourself you should wake up early to go for a run. But how many times do you hit snooze and linger in bed for an extra hour? I’ve lost count of the number of times that knowing I should simply wasn’t enough.

When it comes to goal-setting in fitness, identifying your why is a common first step. And for good reason: If you can connect your actions to something meaningful — be it improving your health to live long enough to meet your grandchildren, accomplishing a lifelong goal of completing an Ironman, or having the strength to carry all the groceries into the house in one trip — you improve your chances of showing up and doing the work to achieve these goals.

Saying I should get up to run has set me up for failure and disrupted my sleep. But identifying my why — for instance, my love of watching the sunrise on a cool morning or building up the stamina to run a race two months down the line — is plenty to get me moving. This links my workouts to something beyond just working out; it takes me out of some momentary discomfort by focusing on something I truly want or believe in.

In recent years, though, I’ve found yet another powerful source of motivation: naming my who.

The first time I worked out with someone else in mind was in 2010, when my cousin Louisa asked if I’d run a half-marathon with her to celebrate her 50th birthday. I wasn’t a runner and had never imagined running a 5K, let alone a 13.1-mile course. Yet I agreed without hesitation.

The reality of training hit me only later, but by then I was committed. I often tried to convince myself it was OK not to run — because it was hard, because it was hot, because it was cold, because I was tired, because I was self-conscious. But each time, I remembered that every step leading up to the race celebrated Louisa. It was easier to show up for her than to show up for the training, or even for the race. By showing up for her, I ultimately showed up for myself.

More recently, I was invited to name a new who: Kelly Richards. You might not know Kelly, and neither did I, but as soon as I heard her story I felt connected. The manager of Life Time’s Target Center club in Minneapolis, Kelly is a triathlete who loves dancing, Bitmojis, New Kids on the Block, the Seattle Seahawks, and her friends. And back in August, Kelly was involved in a horrifying bike accident that caused serious brain injuries. In a moment, she went from a fun-loving, big-hearted athlete to a woman in a coma fighting for her life.

Her colleagues rallied around her to design a benefit workout with a party atmosphere. Rally for Richards — a triathlon of sorts, comprising an Alpha workout, a cycling workout, and a yoga session — raised money for Kelly’s treatment and hoped-for recovery.

Additionally, it gave the people in her life a chance to come together to support her and each other.

That night, dozens of us worked out side by side, breaking a sweat and pushing our physical limits. But the workouts were more than just exercise.

“Remember who you’re here for,” drilled one of the coaches leading the Alpha crew as we slogged through an interval circuit of box jumps, kettlebell swings, burpees, jumping rope, and rowing. It was an effective workout, a challenging combo of strength and conditioning moves.

We all showed up to work out, and work out hard, but none of us was there for the workout itself. We were there for Kelly. For her family. For her friends. For each other. For ourselves.

Since then, as Kelly has made slow progress, I think of her — still a woman I don’t know personally — every time I feel my commitment to my workouts falter. I remember that if she could, she would. And I know that every step, every lift, every rep is a shot of positive energy. For her. For the people who love her. And ultimately, for me, too.

When it comes to working out, who are you here for?