I’m a huuuuge fan of workout finishers. Why? Well, part of it has to do with the results you get physically, sure. And along with that, the emotional and psychological feeling of a job (well, a workout) well done.
But mostly I love workout finishers because they trick my brain into doing the workout I want to do when it doesn’t want to do it. It’s like a mind hack.
Heh heh heh.
Meat and potatoes.
I think of the main workout like the main meal. The meat and potatoes, if you will. If you just do that, you’ve done your job and you can go on with your day.
Buuuuut…
If you still have some more in you, and you want to ride that momentum for just a bit, workout finishers are a great way to get results faster without feeling like you’re a slave to the gym (or your home gym).
The beauty of the bonus.
My favorite part about workout finishers?
You don’t have to do them.
They aren’t mandatory. (Redundant, I know, but I like milking it.)
Look, we’re all different, and maybe you don’t see this the way I do, but as much as I love working out, planning workouts, sculpting my body and watching it grow and adapt, let’s face it—it’s a drag sometimes.
I’m personally very disciplined. However, that also means that I have a huge amount of guilt and anxiety over abandoning or truncating my planned workouts. Just the other day, I was mid-workout and my IKEA delivery came (yeah, you have to in New York City), and I was prepared to let him wait with my sofa and shelves and shit until I finished. (I mean, he was early, so…) But I didn’t. The Mister was like, “We need to get home!”
Know what, though? I did the rest of the workout that I didn’t get to finish on another day. As a bonus. So it all worked out!
Before-workout-you vs. after-workout-you.
The version of you before the workout, when you write it down or plan it out, is not the same you during or after the workout. It’s like how late-night you is not the early-morning-getting-up-to-work you. And we’ve all been there when early-morning-you cusses out late-night-you for drinking that extra glass (or two or three or bottle or two bottles–-yeah, I had issues).
Similarly, sometimes it works best to plan a bare-bones workout and see where it takes you. If you plan out a workout that’s 40 minutes long, it might be psychologically really hard to get through. At 20 minutes you’ll think, “Ugh, only halfway!”
However, if you plan 30 minutes of your workout and leave space to add on a bonus, well… no harm, no foul if you’re too tired to do the bonus. And that 20-minute mark will be “Yay! Almost done!”
The real takeaway: less obligation.
The real takeaway beauty of workout finishers is that they allow you to get more workout in with less obligation.
Obligation sucks. It’s necessary, yes, and we all have them and they’re necessary and keep our lives on track. But it is so much easier to get things done when it’s not done out of obligation, but out of desire.
With a workout finisher, a bonus workout, at the end of the workout you get to assess how you feel and decide A) if you even want to do more, and B) what kind of extra workout do you need? This puts you in the driving seat, and makes the fitness journey so much more satisfying.
You can own it.
What does a workout finisher look like?
A workout finisher is usually less than 15 minutes, performed after your regular workout, and has a specific purpose. That purpose could be extra cardio, if you want to burn a little more fat or work your cardiovascular system. It could also be a focused mini-strength program on one body part or region.
Cardio finishers
Cardio finishers are pretty easy to think up. Grab one or a few cardio-based movements and add them at the end of the workout (burpees, jump rope, running, jumping jacks, jump squats, etc.). Boom! Done!
In general, cardio finishers shouldn’t be as intense as a regular workout, especially if you’re aiming to build or maintain muscle. Bodyweight workouts work really well (like this one) because they usually have a cardio element to them (like plyometrics) and they don’t force you to sacrifice form or lift a 40lbs weight above your head when you’re already exhausted. Keep overly technical movements for the main workout.
Does that mean bodyweight only for cardio finishers? Not necessarily. Because the finisher should be a couple of notches below your regular workout on the intensity factor, consider keeping them on the lighter side. Unless you’re doing a strength-based finisher (more on that later).
Circuits or AMRAPs (As Many Rounds As Possible) work really well for workout finishers because they allow you to work at your pace and not push yourself past the limit. They also are the easiest finishers to think up on the fly.
What to avoid on a cardio workout finisher.
Also, back to that intensity thing—avoid HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) for cardio finishers. HIIT is amazing and gets results, yes, but it gets those results because it puts a lot of stress on your system. HIIT shouldn’t be done every day or every workout, and ideally only in short spurts.
What about a really short HIIT? Maybe.
I have talked before about adding 4-minute interval workouts into your regular routine, and while these could work as workout finishers, they aren’t usually ideal. Why? Well, workout finishers are at the end. Even though you might have a little extra in you, super-intense workouts are not usually easy or safe after you’ve already exhausted your body. Put the 4-minutes-in-hell workouts at the beginning or middle of your workouts. Unless, of course, you had a very unchallenging workout and need to burn off some energy.
Strength-based workout finishers.
To build muscle, you have to put the muscle under a certain amount of stress. While it’s not necessary to go to failure in your strength training, you do need to reach a certain level of fatigue for a certain amount of time (or reps) in order to stimulate growth.
Strength finishers work really well on specific body parts or muscles that maybe aren’t getting such laser-sharp focus. If you do Metabolic Resistance Training like I do, this is usually the case. While I fill my workouts with challenging compound movements like thrusters or squats, I usually leave out the simpler but effective isolation exercises because they slow the metabolic rate down during the regular workout.
In a workout finisher, however, I can cool down while focusing on specific muscles. And if I’ve done things right, the muscles I’m working in the finisher have been worked during the regular workout. I’m just maximizing the amount of stimulating reps to speed up muscle growth.
Ideas for workout finishers
So, of course, there are some 10-minute workouts here on the blog, and I’ll continue to add workouts as time goes on. If you’re a beginner or at least a beginner with HIIT or intense workouts, that 10 minutes might be enough for you. (Yup. That’s right.)
But workout finishers aren’t always easy to plan, which is why you might consider keeping it simple or making it up on the spot. It can be fun! My favorite thing to do is a 10-minute AMRAP. There aren’t intervals to adhere to, so you can go at your own pace. You also know how long it will take you.
Here are some of my favorite workout finisher ideas:
- 10-minute run
- 10-minute interval run (30 seconds sprinting/running and 30 seconds jogging)
- Exercise machines for 10-15 minutes
- 10-minute cardio AMRAP
- A Tabata workout, or even two (HIIT, yes, so keep the intensity down, which means it’s not really technically a Tabata, but you know what I mean)
- Jumping rope
- Ab workout
- Calf exercises
- Lower body AMRAP
- Glute-focused AMRAP
- Upper body AMRAP
- Mini-version of the workout you just did
One last benefit of workout finishers.
Workout finishers allow you to leave the workout feeling like you really worked the hell out of your body. It feels good. I sometimes say, “I don’t want to work out, but I want to have worked out.”
Workout finishers give you the satisfaction that you can do this, you can do more, you are stronger and more resilient than you think. But all without obligation.