10 Minute Low-impact at Home Exercise

1. Stretch - 2 minutes - Before beginning any exercise, it is important to get your body ready and warmed up. Take a minute to stretch your legs, arms, and core. Once you're feeling limber, take another minute to warm up. Get up on the balls of your feet and bounce around for a few seconds, not aggressively, but just enough to get your blood flowing. 

2. Planks - 1 minute - Many exercise enthusiast agree the plank position is a powerful tool. Some even claim it can bend time, making a minute feel like an hour when you are in plank position. Depending on your ability, you may or may not be able to clear a minute of planking. If you can do it off the bat, you are probably in good shape already. If this is the case, you should set goals for yourself past one minute and try to push yourself further. If you can't do it, don't fret. It is totally normal to not be able to achieve this off the bat. Simply hold the plank as long as you can, and spend the remainder of the minute resting, and setting a new goal for yourself for the next time around. 

3. Squats - 1 minute - Squats are a reliable way to strengthen your leg muscles and core overall. For this minute, you should pick the number of squats you want to achieve and split it in half. Try to knock out the first portion in the first 25 seconds, take a ten second rest, and finish out the last portion in the last 25 seconds. 

4. Push-ups - 1 minute - After your planks and squats, you may find push-ups are much more difficult. Now that your supporting muscle groups are fatigued a bit, these pushups will Engauge the small stabilization muscle groups much more effectively. The strategy for these pushups is much the same as the squats - pick a goal, knock out the first half, rest 10 seconds, and finish strong.

5. Shadow boxing - 5 minutes - While your technique may not be perfect to start - there is a reason that boxers have to be in tip top shape: Boxing is exhausting to do for long, even with no opponent. On top this, your earlier exercise will have warmed you up properly to get in some good cardio. To get the maximum benefit out of shadowboxing (if you have no plans of being a boxer or learning the techniques) it is important you learn a few basics.

The video above goes a great job of showing you the basic moves that you will need to shadow box for exercise. The main exercise benefit to shadowboxing comes from moving your body around, engaging many muscle groups at once, and keeping a pace or rhythm. Spend 5 minutes shadow boxing and you will soon learn how quickly you can exhaust yourself if you're not properly conditioned.