Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who has trouble with these moves.

It’s now easier than ever to get your recommended amount of exercise, according to new physical activity guidelines released Monday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While the total number of minutes per week has not changed, one important detail has: Now, the government says, every little bit of activity—even just one or two minutes at a time—counts.

The update, officially known as the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, was announced at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting. Previously, the guidelines stated that physical activity must be done in increments of 10 minutes or more to count toward your weekly total.

“Some physical activity is better than none,” the updated guidelines state. “Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity gain some health benefits.”

The change is important, experts say, because many Americans simply aren’t meeting the guidelines set for adults—to get at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate physical activity, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, per week. According to research published in JAMA with the guidelines, only 26% of men and 19% of women are getting that much.

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The guidelines (original and updated) recommend that children ages 6 to 17 get 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day, but only 20% of adolescents meet the recommendations for their age groups. And now, for the first time, the guidelines make a recommendation for children ages 3 to 5—that they should be physically active throughout the day.

“The new guidelines demonstrate that, based on the best science, everyone can dramatically improve their health just by moving—anytime, anywhere, and by any means that gets you active,” said Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health, in an HHS press release. The guidelines cite research suggesting that an estimated $117 billion in annual health care costs, and about 10% of premature deaths, are associated with not meeting these daily and weekly activity goals.

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They also list several benefits of physical activity that have been discovered since the initial Physical Activity Guidelines were introduced in 2008. These include improved bone health, weight status, and cognitive function for children; reduced risk of eight types of cancers (up from two in 2008); brain health benefits; reduced anxiety and depression risk; improved sleep quality; and reduced risk of falls for older adults. Physical activity can also reduce the risk of health complications for pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions.

Ideally, the guidelines say, adults should get a mix of different types of activity, including moderate aerobic activity (like walking), vigorous aerobic activity (like running), and muscle-strengthening activities (like weight training). All three of these activities are good for your muscles and for your heart, research shows. For example, a recent University of Iowa study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that lifting weights can reduce risk of heart attack or stroke by 40 to 70%, and it took less than one hour a week to see the biggest benefits.

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The new guidelines also acknowledge that there are immediate health benefits attainable from a single bout of activity—such as reduced anxiety and blood pressure, improved sleep quality, and improved insulin sensitivity. Overall, the guideline authors wrote in JAMA, the evidence is clear: “Physical activity fosters normal growth and development and can make people feel better, function better, sleep better, and reduce the risk of many chronic diseases.”

Of course, most health experts have been singing this tune for quite a while—and we’ve long been proponents of the idea that every little bit of exercise counts. That’s why it’s so important to sit less, at work and at home; to take more steps every day; and to find creative ways to sneak in physical activity, even when you’re not doing an official heart-pumping, sweat-inducing workout.

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Isolating muscles is so last year. Unless you’re rehabbing from an injury or working to strengthen a weaker part of your body, the rule of thumb should be to work as many muscles as possible with each exercise (while of course maintaining good form). The more muscles you can incorporate into each set, the more effective and efficient your workout will be.

You don’t need more time to work out; you just need more intensity. By swapping these five simple exercises you can maximize your effort and calorie burn while minimizing your time spent at the gym.

Squats instead of leg press machine

While a leg press is good for isolating your quads, it leaves something to be desired as a total-body exercise. The truth is you have to add so much more weight on a leg press machine to get the same effect that squatting vertically would have. And whereas the leg press includes little to no stabilizer muscle involvement (because the machine gives you total upper body support), squatting forces you to recruit those stabilizer muscles groups in order to complete each rep. That is, your hip adductors (inner thighs) to keep your knees spaced shoulder width apart, as well as your ab muscles to hold your torso in place as the knees bend. Talk about a full body exercise. Don’t forget to keep the knees right on top of the heels as you squat down—less pressure on the joints and you’ll really feel those hamstrings and glutes fire.

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Plank on a BOSU ball instead of crunches

In terms of overall total body effectiveness, we all know that the plank is superior to the crunch. By holding your entire body in an isometric contraction you’re strengthening everything from your abs and glutes, to your legs, back, and chest. But we’re cranking it up a little further. Adding some sort of balancing factor to your plank—in this case a BOSU ball—will have your whole body, especially your core, feeling the burn in no time. Simply place your forearms on the rounded side while you do your plank. You can also try them with your arms on the flat side. Once you master holding your BOSU ball plank for at least 30 seconds, start adding in some variations—slow mountain climbers and then adding a twist to the opposite side as you bring the knee into the chest are just a few to get your mind working. Any variation after that is fair game. Get creative!

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Pull ups instead of bicep curls

Despite popular opinion, a pull up is a much more effective way of targeting those guns than a typical curl would be. Plus, with a pull up, you’re working your entire upper body and engaging your core muscles too. The key is intensity. You can’t cheat a pull up; you either got it or you don’t. And don’t get discouraged if you can only muster one or two to start, know that you’re still exhausting your muscles and therefore building strength. If the thought of even one seems daunting, try wrapping a resistance band around the bar and hook your feet (or bent knees) into it for some assistance getting up. Then, once you become more proficient you can take the band away and start to add more repetitions.

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VersaClimber instead of the bike

If you’re one of those people who loves to sit on the bike and occupy your upper body with a book or magazine while your lower body does all the work, listen up. Cardio success is not about the number of calories burned during your 45-minute session. It’s about elevating your heart rate enough for a prolonged period of time (about 20 minutes at 80% or higher) to achieve the “afterburn” effect, boosting your metabolism so you continue to burn additional calories throughout that day and the next. The VersaClimber is a great option because it incorporates upper and lower body movements at the same time, which not only keeps you engaged in the workout but also means you can cut your time spent on the machine in half. So, give it a try. In addition to preventing boredom, switching up your cardio routine will keep your body guessing and you on track to achieving your fitness goals. (Try this VersaClimber workout.)

Dumbbell bench instead of traditional bench press

Contrary to popular belief, the bench press is not the best move for the upper body. While it may do a good job of isolating a few specific muscles, using two dumbbells instead of the traditional bar will increase your range of motion and recruit more muscles in the shoulders and back as well. Not only that, but you can add some core work into the equation by alternating arms one at a time to challenge your balance and force those abs to join the party. If you really want to kick it up a notch, try switching out the bench for a Swiss Ball and get some more stabilizers involved!

Looking for more ways to enhance your workout? Try 5 Upgrades to Your Favorite Body Weight Moves and 7 Workout Habits You Should Drop Now.

Jennifer Cohen is a leading fitness authority, TV personality, entrepreneur and best-selling author of the new book, Strong is the New Skinny. With her signature, straight-talking approach to wellness, Jennifer was the featured trainer on The CW’s Shedding for the Wedding, mentoring the contestants’ to lose hundreds of pounds before their big day, and she appears regularly on NBC’s Today Show, Extra, The Doctors and Good Morning America. Connect with Jennifer on Facebook, Twitter, G+ and on Pinterest.

My legs—and lungs—are burning as I pedal. The cycling interval’s only 10 seconds long, but it sure feels like the clock is moving in slow motion. Coach Mauricio Andrade stands in front of me, offering support that’s motivating but firm. There’s not a chance he’ll let me slow down or slack off.

When he finally calls time and I ease up my cadence, I glance around to the view of snow-capped peaks. That, and the thin air, have momentarily transported me to a place like Leadville, Colorado or Cusco, Peru, at an altitude of about 10,000 feet.

But once I’m mercifully finished with my two rounds of 10 high-intensity intervals, I’ll step outside, inhale deeply, and get back in my car to drive to my apartment on the North Side of Chicago. That mountain view? It’s a wall-sized decal.

I’m working out this morning in the altitude chamber at Well-Fit Performance, a training hub for many of the city’s triathletes and other endurance athletes. In addition to endless pools, strength- and functional-training equipment, and a full complement of treadmills and bike trainers, Well-Fit has now installed one of the few altitude chambers in the country, and the first in the region. 

The facility’s expensive compressors essentially suck the oxygen out of the air, simulating some of what I’d experience if I hiked to Machu Picchu or ran the Leadville 100-miler. There are two other women near me, doing their own workouts on top-of-the-line Woodway treadmills; when I catch my breath enough to chat with them afterward, I learn they’re training for a trek in Kathmandu.

If I visit the room regularly—twice a week for four to eight weeks—I just might see my race times come down and my fitness level reach new heights, Well-Fit’s owner and head coach Sharone Aharon tells me. “There’s such enormous benefit to training at altitude, at high intensity,” he says. “If I say one sentence about it, you train less and you gain more.”

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Why athletes train at altitude

For decades, elite endurance athletes have headed to the mountains for altitude training. Because there’s less oxygen in the air to begin with—and less atmospheric pressure pushing it into athletes’ veins—their bodies respond by boosting the production of red blood cells. The effect is temporary, so they have to time it right. But when they then head back down to sea level for competition, these adaptations deliver hard-working muscles an augmented supply of oxygen to power each contraction.

The problem is that sweating in thinner air isn’t just harder for us mere mortals, it’s also more challenging for the likes of marathon champions like Shalane Flanagan. You just can’t pedal as hard or run as fast at higher elevation. So athletes have to find other ways to push their bodies to the limit, says Andrew Subudhi, PhD, professor and chair of the department of biology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, who’s studied the effects extensively.

That’s why a protocol called “live high, train low” was developed. Athletes often sleep in the mountains, then descend to knock out hard workouts. Or, rooms like the one at Well-Fit are sometimes used in reverse, to mimic lower elevations—increasing the oxygen in the air so athletes can reap altitude’s benefits to their blood but still push themselves at faster paces. In fact, that’s the primary purpose of a similar chamber at the U.S. Olympic Training facility also in Colorado Springs, Subudhi says.

Those of us stuck near sea level, and without a budget for altitude camp, have to take a different approach, such as one called intermittent hypoxic (aka low-oxygen) training. That means doing most of your workouts in normal air, but heading “higher” for short bursts of really hard efforts. And that’s what rooms like the one at Well-Fit are designed for: “We brought the altitude to the everyday person,” Aharon says.

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What the science says

Scientific research has shown support for such training plans. In one study, runners who did two tough sessions per week in a low-oxygen chamber for six weeks improved how long they could run at a comfortably fast pace by 35%, while those who did the same type of speedwork in regular air showed no improvements. In another, cyclists could complete more back-to-back sprints after four weeks of training in air simulating about 10,000 feet, an enhanced ability to work hard repeatedly that Aharon calls having “more matches to burn.”

Interestingly, simulated altitude doesn’t seem to work exactly the same way as the real deal. Most of the low-oxygen chambers, including the one at Well-Fit, do thin the air but don’t change the air pressure. Athletes in these studies didn’t show changes in their red blood cell count, meaning the training is working in another way, one that scientists are still trying to untangle.

“Some of the speculation is that maybe it’s changing how efficiently your body uses the oxygen, or maybe it just changes how your nervous system is driving the muscles independent of the oxygen,” Subudhi says. And then there’s perception, which has a real effect on your performance. In other words, if you think something’s going to allow you to run or bike for faster or longer, it just might.

Whatever the mechanisms, Aharon says he’s experienced the benefits personally. During a recent half Ironman—a triathlon with a 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run—his last 10 miles on the bike were the fastest. He wasn’t as well-trained overall as he would have liked, he says, but he believes his twice-weekly altitude sessions provided the extra oomph: “I can see that also riding with my friends. All of a sudden they don’t drop me like they normally do.”

Many other Well-Fit athletes have noticed similar improvements. The facility has a testimonial page full of marathoners who’ve run personal bests and triathletes who’ve dropped along the lines of 45 minutes from their finishing times. And then there are people preparing for trips to higher peaks, like those trekkers I encountered. Logging some solid time at simulated versions of their destination elevation may help reduce the time they need to acclimatize once they get there.

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Scientists don’t agree 100% on the benefits of any of these protocols, including training at actual altitude, Subudhi points out. The evidence for intermittent hypoxic training is interesting, but may be clouded by what’s called publication bias—the fact that if a study found these methods didn’t work, it likely wouldn’t be published. That can skew an entire body of research toward the positive even when a tool or technique might not work for everyone.

Still, there’s little downside except for the cost ($230 per month, $250 for a 10-visit punch pass, or $30 for a day pass, at Well-Fit) and the risk of feeling lightheaded (in which case you should back off and step out). You can minimize these chances if you ease into the training and stick to elevations below about 12,000 feet, Subudhi says.

For a recreational athlete with an ambitious goal—in my case, re-qualifying for the Boston Marathon—logging some workouts at faux altitude just might be worth a shot. “A lot of training and getting better is letting your body experience different stresses,” Subudhi says. “You can get stale doing the same thing over and over. This is something new and different, and it is a little bit more stressful on your body, so it can help push people harder.”

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