The 15-15-15 Workout Is Great Cardio for Those Who Get Bored Easily.
I just learned that one of my favorite ways to pass the time at the hotel gym has a memorable name and celebrity endorsement. This is a 15-15-15 workout and will give you a good 45 minute cardio session even if you can’t do anything for 45 minutes straight.
What is 15-15-15 training?
The idea behind 15-15-15 is simple: you simply do 15 minutes of exercise on three different cardio machines. Like this:
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15 minutes on a spin bike
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15 minutes on the elliptical trainer
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15 minutes on the treadmill
I’ve often done this version when I’m in one of those sad hotel gyms with few or no weights, just cardio machines. There’s usually a treadmill, elliptical and/or bike available, so I’ll spend a few minutes on each. The 15-15-15 version will give you a 45-minute workout.
Where did the 15-15-15 workout come from?
As far as I can tell, its origins are one short quote from an interview Jennifer Aniston gave to In Style magazine in 2021 . After the injury break, she said, “I missed that sweat where you just go for it. I’m going back to my 15-15-15 pattern, which is 15 minutes of spinning elliptical running.”
Why 15-15-15 is ideal if cardio makes you tired
If you’re bored with cardio, a 45-minute workout is quite a challenge. But 15? I’m sure you could handle 15. It’s just a five-minute warm-up, five minutes of hard work in the middle, and then the last five minutes you’re at the finish line. (Mentally breaking up workouts like this helps my brain, even if I’m doing the same thing for all 15 minutes.) Then jump off that machine, pick another one, and repeat. Three such mini-workouts – and you worked 45 minutes per day. Feel free to adjust the time as needed; you can do 10-10-10 in a 30-minute workout.
How hard should a 15-15-15 workout be?
There is no wrong answer to this question. The 15-15-15 pattern is a great way to complete a zone 2 cardio workout using an easy conversational pace for all three segments. Some people find Zone 2 work easy and fun, and they watch a video or chat with a friend while doing it.
But some of us get bored faster, and breaking each mini-workout into intervals can make it much more fun. Try this:
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Warm up for three minutes at an easy pace.
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Work hard for one minute, then recover by doing very light activity for one minute.
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Repeat these intervals five more times for a total of six hard and six recovery minutes.
It’s a three-minute warm-up followed by 12 minutes of alternating intervals, ending with an easy minute. You can do this mini-program on each machine in turn, or on just a few of them—perhaps the first and last—while challenging yourself to maintain a steady state on the middle machine.
Can you do 15-15-15 on different machines or in a different order?
Are you sure you can! There’s nothing magical about the running order: bike, elliptical, run. You can move them. You can also swap out other equipment – how about a stepper, a bike, a rowing machine?
Or heck, hop between a bike and a treadmill if those are the only machines you have. (Again, hello to very small hotel gyms.) 15-15-15 isn’t so much a “workout” as it is a structure that you can fill in with whatever workouts you want , so feel free to get creative.