Everyone is busy these days. It's tough enough to find enough time to play cricket, let alone train.

But you already know how important it is to be fit for cricket.

One simple solution might be to cut back how long your workouts last. If you can get a full workout in a few minutes why bother going into the gym for an hour?

This is the idea behind many training plans that promise impressive improvements in as little as 4 minutes.

In all honesty, very short workouts do little to benefit you in the long term. If you really want to feel the benefits you need to be working out for longer periods regularly. But there is a compromise (which I will get to in a moment).

Why super short workouts never work out.

If you are very unfit, a very short, intense workout will improve your fitness levels. This is because any exercise is better than no exercise.

Sadly, due to the principle of adaptation, you quickly adapt to short training sessions and within a few weeks you will see the improvements stop whether your goal is fat loss, strength increase or anything else.

With longer training sessions you have more flexibility to keep improving such as increasing the number of sets and reps of an exercise. You can also do more exercises. This is important, because no matter how clever a short workout plan is, it has to lose out somewhere as you can do enough in the time available.

You are always much better off with a proper training plan with workouts lasting between 30-60 minutes.

Sometimes you just can't get to train for an hour.

When this happens, it's better to squeeze in a short workout than to skip training altogether.

Short workouts can be used as a short term solution to an immediate problem.

You can also use shorter workouts as a way to rest from harder training. For example, if you have just finished your season and want a couple of weeks off from anything too hard you can switch to a twice a week 15 minute workout just to keep your body moving while it recovers from the stresses of a tough season.

• Use whatever equipment you can find. Sometimes you will be able to use a fully equipped gym, other times you will just have your bodyweight.
• Look for exercises that train a number of muscles at the same time such as squats, chin ups or rows.
• Superset 2 opposite exercises together by completing a set of each exercise without rest. An example of opposite exercises is press ups (pushing) and inverted rows (pulling).
• Keep rest between sets to 30-60 seconds.
• Always include at least one exercise that trains core stability such as planks or ab wheel roll outs.
• Increase the power element of the workout by having at least one power based exercise such as cleans, squat jumps or clap push ups.

Short workouts are far from perfect, but as a compromise they work well. Use them wisely and you can keep your fitness eye in when all else fails. A good source for workouts like this is Turbulence Training. 

Photo credit: Alison007