Grab some water, turn on some music that motivates you, and get ready for some screaming muscles and a serious sweat session!
This fat-burning workout focuses heavily on the butt, thighs, and cardiovascular endurance. The HIIT cardio exercises all call upon the lower body, and they're coupled with strength and toning exercises that also target the glutes and thighs. Long story short—make sure you have a sweat towel nearby, as well as that water, so that you can sip on fluids all throughout to avoid dehydration (remember, save the heavy guzzling for after your workout is finished in order to avoid a stomach ache).
There are many different ways that you can use this workout, and it's easily modified to meet a range of fitness levels. For example, if these exercises are too hard or if the burning muscles get so bad that you just can't take it anymore, you can either take a quick break (sometimes even just a few seconds allows you to come back and push yourself that much harder) or you can take the jumps out of the exercises in order to make it lower impact.
On the other hand, if you're looking for even more of a challenge, that's easy to make happen too—just add weights to the strength/toning component, and even the high intensity cardio intervals if you're feeling like you really want to just brutalize those lower body muscles.
It's an advantageous approach to think of your workout routine as a fluid, flexible experience; some days you feel stronger than others, other days you're just lucky to have left the couch! Some days you might have more energy to press forward through the most difficult variation of an exercise, other times you might find yourself losing steam before you reach the glorious end of that 20 second interval. The important thing is that you're present and listening to your body all throughout any workout, working to constantly find the balance between pushing & respecting your own limits.
Your exercise needs are not only something that change throughout your lifetime; through times of strength & high energy, illness or injury, but they also change day to day. Once you embrace that concept, staying active throughout your life becomes much less intimidating, and a lot more enjoyable. As with anything in life, if you enjoy what you're doing, then it increases your likelihood of sticking with it, which is arguably one of the most important things to consider, of course. After all, it doesn't matter how great your fitness plan is if you don't actually DO it.
You don't need any equipment for this, but you're welcome to add in dumbbells or any other kind of weight to increase the challenge and the benefit. You can always get creative if you don't have equipment; these exercises are difficult enough that even the weight of a couple of water bottles will increase the challenge, and you can fill a backpack with books if you want to do some heavy lifting.
Everything you need to know about this routine:
Targets: Glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, inside and outside thighs, calves, and cardiovascular endurance
Benefits: Increasing stamina, fat burning, shaping the lower body & toning the stomach (abs are a supporting muscle group all throughout)
Equipment: Optional dumbbells or any other kind of weight
Warm up & cool down included
Structure: HIIT: 20 On 10 Off x 3 - Strength/Toning: 10 Reps
Oz Jump Squats
Deadlift Swivel (toes in and out)
Downward Dog Push Offs
Squat + Toe Rotation
Ski Squat Slide & Jump
Double Ski & Sumo
Squat Jack Burpees
3,2,1 Deadlifts
3 Switchfoot Toe Taps
Squat + Lunge Combo
What did you think of this video? Did you make it all the way through? Did you modify to make the exercises easier, or harder? Sign in & post below so that you can compare your notes the next time you tackle this challenge.