We've created a fun 5 Day Workout Challenge for intermediate-advanced exercisers to jumpstart you towards all of your fitness and health goals. All you need for this 5 Day Challenge is a set of dumbbells. If you push yourself over the course of this short program and make sure that you're eating healthily, you might notice small changes in the way your body looks and feels by the end of these 5 days.
Day One: 40 Minute At Home Butt and Thigh Workout - Lower Body Workout with Kelli and Daniel - Lift your butt, shape your thighs, and burn off a great deal of calories with some of the most effective lower body exercises possible. This workout is great with weights but is still highly effective with no equipment at all. Estimated Calorie Burn: 216-408
Day Two: 37 Minute Upper Body Superset Workout with Fat Burning Cardio Intervals - Arm, Chest, Back & Shoulder Workout - Your legs should be pretty sore from yesterday's workout. If they aren't, that's a sign that you might need to bump up the amount of weight that you're lifting during your strength workouts (or check your form). Today we're working our upper body, and we've thrown in a few cardio bursts to keep your heart rate up & the calorie burn high. Estimated Calorie Burn: 195-403
Day Three: 35 Minute Insane HIIT Challenge - Bodyweight Only High Intensity Interval Training Workout - This workout is brutal! Push yourself, but pace yourself; listen to your body and modify exercises or take extra breaks when necessary. Your metabolism is going to be reeling after this incredibly effective fat burning workout. Estimated Calorie Burn: 278-429
Day Four: 37 Minute Fat Burning Cardio Workout and/or, if you're feeling very sore, try this 27 Minute Yoga Pilates Stretching Blend - Burn off some extra calories with these easy-on-the-body recovery workout videos. Estimated Calorie Burn: Cardio only: 222-407 Stretching only: 73-132 Both: 295-539
Day Five: 35 Minute Total Body Toning Strength and HIIT Cardio Workout - You vs You - Finish off the week with this total body strength training routine that will leave you feeling strong and satisfied. In under 35 minutes you get a cardiovascular challenge, a total body toning workout, and your cool down and stretch. Estimated Calorie Burn: 183-398
This 5 Day Program is just a small, simplified snapshot of what our Fat Loss Programs are like - the actual programs are more detailed and include much more information, as well as a nutrition overview to guide you on how to best fuel your body to look and feel great. You can use this 5 day plan for 2-3 weeks in a row; any longer than that and you're looking at needing to mix up your routine a bit. If you need help putting together a safe and effective long term workout plan to follow, check out our programs below.
Here's a brief rundown on each of the programs that we offer:
8 Week Fat Loss Programs Round 1-4: These can be done in any order; the higher the round of the program, the newer the workouts (each of the program uses different workout videos). These programs are challenging and include a combination of HIIT, strength training, plyometrics, circuit training, cardio, kettlebell, kickboxing, stretching, Pilates, yoga, etc. All you need for this program is a set of dumbbells (dumbbells make a great sub for kettlebells). Rounds 2-4 all start off with brutal workouts, but include a beginner option for the first 2 weeks of the program, if the initial HIIT routines prove to be too challenging. The first round starts off at a slower pace, and picks up in difficulty throughout the program. Workouts last about 50-60 minutes on average, with a couple of instances of the 1000 Calorie Workout Videos in the later programs (these workouts tend to be longer!). Detailed workouts are planned for you 5-6 days/week (the sixth day is optional). Nutrition overview included in each round.
Fat Loss Program for Busy People - These are very similar to our regular Fat Loss Programs but are modified for people who just don't have time to workout for an hour each day; this program provides a workout plan that can change a person's body and fitness level in less than 30 minutes a day. Nutrition overview included.
Low Impact Program for Beginners - If you're new to exercising, this is a great place to start. This is also great for people want to avoid high impact exercises on their joints. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this program will be a cake walk; we use beginner friendly low impact cardio (there's almost literally no jumping at all throughout this program), strength training, and stretching to help shed bodyweight and reduce body fat, without being overly taxing on the body. Workouts are generally 40-60 minutes on average, 5-6 days/week (the sixth day is optional). Nutrition overview included.
If you don't want to spend a single penny, you can learn how to use our workouts to build your own program here.
You can't out-exercise a bad diet, and for that reason we also offer 4 Week Meal Plans; detailed day by day guides about what to eat for three meals and three snacks a day. There are five different calorie allotments provided so that you can use the plan to lose, maintain, or gain weight. Vegan Meal Plan and Vegetarian Meal Plan options available.
Why don't we do this every week?!
Ideally, we could. We try to give our audience as much as we can for free. However, our workout videos are incredibly expensive to produce (you wouldn't believe me if I told you!) and our website is very costly to keep online - for example, just the hosting fees alone are over three times the monthly payment of our mortgage on our house. We want to keep expanding and offering more and more helpful features and website functions, and we're also starting to talk about app development - we have lots of exciting ideas in the works and the books are one of the ways that we can fund those updates. Additionally, we really like the creative ability to be able to offer workout videos so varied that everyone from a beginner to an elite athlete can find something helpful amongst our workout videos to get themselves up and moving. Rather than get locked into offering the same level of difficulty or training style day after day because of a challenge, we like to offer one off workout videos and then build programs off of those videos (our Fat Loss Programs). With all of this long ramble out there, we will say that this challenge was fun and that we will tackle another one sometime over the next few months. If you want to help us move faster with website updates and app development, support Fitness Blender by buying one of our programs, or you can donate here.
Thank you!
Thank you to everyone who worked out with us for the 5 Day Challenge. We hope that you take the momentum you've built over the week and keep it going! Fitness should be a fluid, living, breathing, daily part of your lives - and it should be a priority; there is nothing superficial or unimportant about working out and eating right. It's about living longer, healthier, happier lives. Whether you are brand new to exercise or you're a sweat veteran, keep it up, and never stop.