30 Minutes and Out

New Gym Routines Cater to the Time-Pressed

No time for the gym, you say? Meet the drive-by workout.

While some health clubs offer coffee bars and day spas, hoping you'll stay for a latte or massage, a new gym trend is focused more on your wristwatch. "Faster-quicker" workouts were among the year's top 10 fitness predictions by the American Council on Exercise, and gyms have been listening. How fast is the workout? Stay focused and skip the shower, and you'll be out in 30 minutes or less. Curves, the bare-bones women's fitness chain, is the market driver for the trend. At 1,500 U.S. franchises (including many locations in the Washington area), owners push and cajole members through a circuit of exercise machines, each alternating with a station for aerobic movement. Thirty minutes is all that Curves members get, and -- with no shower or locker room -- all they need to finish. Look-alikes include Ladies Workout Express (with locations in Fairfax and Rockville, among others) and, coming this summer, a men-only chain called Cuts Fitness for Men, featuring its own 30-minute circuit of alternating strength and aerobic training.

The popularity of such high-speed workouts hasn't been lost on established gym chains. Bally Total Fitness and Gold's Gym both say they're studying the concept. Earlier this year, 24 Hour Fitness (a national chain with no clubs in the Washington area) introduced Xpress Zone, a lineup of preset strength training machines meant to deliver a 30-minute circuit training workout.

Washington Sports Clubs (which has 15 locations in the area) has made its workout shorter and even easier than those being offered by other gyms. The XpressLine, eight pieces of strength training equipment, can be zipped through in 22 minutes, thanks in part to a trainer or two who stand by during selected hours to help club members -- at no additional cost -- adjust the weight stacks and seat settings as needed.

It's no accident that the clock on most such workouts runs out at 30 minutes. These days, 30 minutes is a magic number in exercise land. That's the minimum amount of time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that healthy Americans spend in moderate exercise on most days. (The National Academy of Sciences recommends a full hour.)

But most of us fall far short, which is why fitness experts generally endorse the quickie workouts, even though many regard them as having shortcomings. Recent CDC data show that 60 percent of U.S. adults don't achieve the minimum daily goal and that 25 percent are not active at all. "As an exercise physiologist, [I] can pick apart anyone's routine, but in the end [what's important is] getting people to do [the workout]," said Miriam Nelson, director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University in Boston.

The key, others say, may be thinking of 30-minute workouts as good beginnings. "These workouts all have some merit, but they're generally insufficient on their own for a healthy person's weekly exercise needs," said Ben Hurley, professor of exercise physiology at the University of Maryland. If you're going to try a 30-minute workout, he suggests, think of it as your introduction to the gym -- not the only exercise you'll ever do.

Coming Up Short

So far, Julie Moore said, that approach is working for her. The 24-year-old cosmetics consultant, who lives and works in Fairfax, joined a Washington Sports Club in February and promptly started the XpressLine workout. Three months later, she's still doing the XpressLine circuit two to three times a week, even when the equipment is not supervised. After a session or two with a trainer, Moore says she is comfortable using the XpressLine equipment without supervision, and has even graduated to more intense machines elsewhere on the gym floor. "Now that the XpressLine got me started," Moore said, "I'm thinking of joining an exercise class here, too."

While these 30-miniute workouts are more exercise than most of us have done in years, they are generally insufficient to meet current weekly aerobic and strength training recommendations.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the professional society for physicians who specialize in sports medicine, recommends strength training for both the upper and lower body two to three days each week. (Adults often forgo that in favor of an aerobic workout, said Hurley, despite the fact that strength training is crucial for maintaining muscle and bone strength, especially after age 40 for women and 50 for men. Some quickie gym workouts meet recommended strength training needs; some don't. More on that below.) And all strength training should start and end with stretching, said Hurley. The ACSM also recommends 30 minutes of aerobic exercise on most days.