15-minute combo can help when time is tight

By Karen Shideler McClatchy Newspapers - 06/03/2008

Teresa Richards is a wife, a mother of two and a fifth-grade teacher, which doesn’t leave her much time for exercise. So she was delighted to try a book-DVD combo called “15 Minute Total Body Workout” by Joan Pagano and even more delighted to find that it met her needs.

“I liked it,” she says. The book has full-color pictures of the exercises, plus instructions on how to do them. Reading it first made it easy to follow the DVD routines.

The format calls for using an exercise ball and hand weights (soup cans could be substituted, Richards says) as part of the exercise routine. The first of the four 15-minute segments was fairly easy, she says.

“Each one gets a little bit harder.” Richards started watching what she eats last July and has lost 50 pounds by limiting portions and eating healthfully. She added exercise in January, so she is fairly new to it and says the book and DVD were a good fit for her.

The routines mix cardio and strength moves and are a great alternative when time is short or first thing in the morning.

“I felt really good after the workouts,” says Richards, who also tries to get to the YMCA two or three times a week.

When she wanted a longer workout without having to go to the gym, she’d do two of the segments back-to-back.

The only thing Richards found fault with was the voice on the DVD, which she says was “pretty plain.” Her advice to the narrator: “Get some energy in your voice.” “Surely you can find 15 or 20 minutes in a day to do something,” she says.