There just isn’t enough time, particularly in college, where time seems impossible to find. Students can barely get classwork done, much less find time to stay fit.

Fortunately, there are ways to maximize every second of your routine in your daily schedule with 15 minutes extra time in your day. These can significantly improve your health, burn fat, and help you stay more active.

Park far away: This may be hard to rationalize, but on a tight schedule with zero time to work out, you need your cardio where you can get it. Parking a bit further away and jogging to class gets in just that little extra for your heart rate. If that isn’t feasible, jog to and from classes across campus.

Find stairs: There’s a little stairwell in the side of the ATC that’s basically abandoned. Get there early before class; it’ll give you a couple minutes to do some extra work.

High Intensity Interval Workout:

Find a nice, secluded spot. The little gardens and fountains next to the Media Learning Center are a perfect spot that is both scenic and relatively depopulated later in the day. This short exercise should be a “fast and efficient way to lose excess body weight” and “increase…cardiopulmonary health,” according to The American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal.

They recommend doing these with only 10 seconds of downtime between each one, with a relative difficulty of 7-8/10 for 30 seconds each. For greater intensity, increase the rate at which you perform each exercise or modify the exercise for greater activity–no sets with this one. That means it’ll be hard, but if you want to get in a full workout between classes, this is the scientifically-supported best way.

Jumping Jacks: warm up/cardio

Squats: arms/legs

Situps/Crunches: core

Plank: arms

Forward Lunges: legs

All photos courtesy of Keenan McCarty.