Whether you are relatively new to exercise, want low impact to save your joints, or just don't want to disturb your family or neighbors with a lot of stomping and jumping, this cardio workout will fit the bill. Combining both total body exercises with slow controlled motions causes your muscles to have to work 100% of the time through the entire range of motion for each exercise. This allows you to easily get your heart rate up without having to do faster and more dynamic motions.

Though low impact workouts may not be quite as intense as a HIIT routine, don't think that they are not worth your time. This type of routine can easily find a home in even the most advanced workout program, especially those focused on weight loss.

For example say you have been using mainly HIIT workouts because you want to lose weight and you know that HIIT is the fastest way to burn calories. That is great but you can only do that form of training 3-4 times a week maximum to protect your joints from wear and tear, and doubling up on that type of routine back to back may be too much for your joints to handle. However, if you start with a high intensity interval training then do a low impact cardio workout, like this one, you can not only continue to exercise without worry of damaging your joints but because of the the lower intensity level of "quiet" cardio it better positions itself to burn fat content.

This works best when you put any intense routine before a group of lower intensity exercises. When you burn off all of your available carbohydrate from doing the high intensity workout, there is no way you can effectively continue a high intensity routine after that point because highly active routines require carbohydrate for fuel. Continuing on past this point can actually increase your chances of injury as coordination and control start to diminish. You can easily switch to low intensity cardio at this point because the motions are much slower and less dynamic, which does not require as much quick coordination. Also because of the nature of these workouts your body can actually effectively use fat content as fuel to keep you going meaning you can continue to perform at this level of effort for a much longer period of time yielding a larger impact on your body's fat content.

This Low Impact Cardio Workout averages around 4 calories per minute on the low end and 8 calories per minute on the high end. This gives you a total burn of between 84 and 168 calories over this 21 minute routine. If you are a beginner to exercise, this is a great place to start and if you are a veteran looking to burn a few more calories, when used after an intense routine it can help you to burn more fat content.

Below are the exercises and the order of their use in this video. Each is done in a group of two for 10 repetitions in an alternating fashion (AB, AB) twice through before moving onto the next.

Slow Burpees
Squats w/ Lateral Raises

Single Leg High Knees to Extensions (Alternating)
Slow Mt. Climbers (Alternating)

Slow Single Leg Ice Skaters (L and R)

Side Plank Leg Raises (L and R)

Side Hip Raises (L and R)

Plank Extensions
Knee Tuck Crunches