is 10minutes enough.....

someone told me that if I worked out 10minutes at a time 4-5 times a day it is equal or better than doing it all at once. Does that make sense?

I don't know about the States, but according to the Canadian Food Guide....

"To be active every day is a step towards better health and a healthy body weight. Canada's Physical Activity Guide recommends building 30 to 60 minutes of moderate physical activity into daily life for adults and at least 90 minutes a day for children and youth. You don't have to do it all at once. Add it up in periods of at least 10 minutes at a time for adults and five minutes at a time for children and youth. Start slowly... and build up."

There have even been some studies done were people have benefited more with breaking up their exercise into 10 minute increments throughout the day instead of just one long session.  But whatever works for you.  I like the 10 minutes because sometimes it's easier to find 10 minutes here and there instead of one whole distraction-free hour. 

You should be thinking more in terms of quality rather quantity.

For example doing gut wrenching High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) for just 10 mins at a time, 3 times a week will make a big impact on your fitness and health.

Anything is better than nothing. As LittleSimon said, you can exhaust yourself pretty well in only 10 minutes, provided that you wexert yourself at close to your physical max.

On the other hand, for some types of fitness it doesn't make sense to break up your workouts that way.  With weight lifting, for example, you need to be able to devote a considerable block of time to the program.

I guess the bottom line is that your goals should dictate the workouts you do.  There is evidence that short bouts of exercise provide a metabolism boost throughout the day, so if you are trying to lose weight and/or striving for general fitness, it might make sense to incorporate some "mini-workout" sessions.

This, http://www.tabataprotocol.com/, is very similar to HIIT.  It is a great workout for those with limited time throughout the day.

 Tabata interval training is wonderful - well, when I say "wonderful" I mean" four minutes of Hell that work like crazy" but it is not a training protocol for the deconditioned or beginner; Izumi Tabata did his study on collegiate varsity athletes to validate the training methods of the Olympic speed skating team.

 Low-intensity exercise like walking has the same effect whether you do it all at once or accumulate it throughout the day, it's where the 10,000 steps idea comes from.

 So if you're doing either low intensity (recovery training, walking) or high intensity training 10-minute blocks are useful, but outside of that you're probably better off doing al your exercise at once.

HIIT and Tabata are great! I've personally had to build myself up on both of them. I'd wager to say HIIT is a bit easier than Tabata, as the latter is designed to push you up to or a little past max heart rate (220 minus age), while the former usually puts your high points at 85-95% of max heart rate (depending on who you ask).

I've sort of built a system using traditional cardio, HIIT and Tabata. Started off (super out of shape) doing 15 solid minutes of cardio at probably 75% capacity every other day. After about 4 weeks of this, moved up to HIIT, starting at first with 4 sets of on and off, (30 sec high, 60 sec off) then building to a full 15 minute workout of on/offs with 2min warm-up and 2min cool down. I've JUST started my tabatas now, and man it's rough. You definitely need to balance your intervals, resistance and heart rates when doing it!

Try some plyometrics and/or jumping rope. 10 minutes with these burn a lot more than doing other stuff.

Here is a cool article about cardio myths from Fight magazine. Seems as if the high intensity exercises will cause you to burn more calories and fat during the hours after the workout.

http://www.fightmagazine.com/mma-magazine/mma -article.asp?aid=266&issid=20