Advanced HIIT Cardio Blast

This article originally appeared on Oxygen

All cardio workouts have one thing in common -- they can be made harder and more effective if you have the will and the skill to keep up.

"You can make any workout more advanced by dialing up the intensity level, dialing up the difficulty level of the exercise or by dialing down the recovery phase," says personal trainer and group exercise instructor Samantha Clayton, vice president of Worldwide Sports Performance and Fitness for Herbalife Nutrition and a former Olympian who competed for the U.K. in the Sydney 2000 Games. "The workout I'm about to show you does all three."

As Clayton explains it, HIIT -- high-intensity interval training -- involves periods of high-intensity work cycled with low-intensity active recovery. "There are many ways to structure your HIIT intervals depending on your personal preference and current level of fitness," she explains. "Tabata, for instance, falls into the HIIT family but falls toward the more intense end of the scale. It involves a max-effort interval 2:1 work-to-rest ratio and is only for those who feel ready to really push themselves."

Your 20-Minute HIIT Cardio Blast

This workout involves five exercises, which you'll do for four minutes apiece, Tabata style -- that is, 20 seconds all-out effort followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeating that sequence for eight rounds per exercise total.

By keeping your rest minimal between each four-minute round, you'll be able to finish up this exhaustive-but-productive session in just 20 minutes.

"Repeating one exercise in a 20-second-on, 10-second-off format for four minutes is intense, and it more than adequately fatigues the muscle groups targeted in the upper and lower body," Clayton says.

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