Spice Up Your Cross Training With This 30-Minute HIIT Workout

From Bicycling

Unless you’ve got a plan, basic home workouts usually fall into one of two categories: lethargic, uninspired rounds of simple movements like push-ups and sit-ups, or a frenzy of in-place activity with jumps, jacks, and whatever other fast-paced moves you can imagine until you burn out. Neither path is necessarily bad—the most important thing is that you’re moving, after all—but they could definitely be more efficient.

Trainer Charlee Atkins, C.S.C.S. knows that most people are stuck inside cross training at home—so she wants to help everyone avoid those inefficient workouts. More specifically, she wants to show that you can get your heart rate up at home without flailing around or damning yourself to endless burpees. You can be smart and get your sweat on at the same time.

[The Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training will teach you all the fundamentals to get the most out of your weight session.]

“Right now, a lot of us are just working with bodyweight,” Atkins says. “But how do you know which bodyweight exercises to be doing that will give you the biggest bang for your sweaty buck?”

Atkins shares her tips for bodyweight workouts here:

• Choose exercises that use more than one muscle group. For example, variations of lunges and squats.

• Add plyometrics to a few exercises at the beginning of your workout to increase the intensity.

• Complete in interval fashion, but don’t make the intervals too long. Work at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio.

• Exercises should not exceed 60 seconds without proper recovery.

• Always include mobility as part of your workout.

With those tips in mind, Atkins shared one of her favorite bodyweight HIIT routines. To give it a try yourself, all you need is some space to move around and a mat.

Perform each exercise for 40 seconds, then rest for 20 seconds. Don’t take extra rest between rounds.

• 1.5 Squat and Jump

• Plank and Arm Extension

• Bounds

• Runner’s Lunge and Rotation

• Lunge Matrix

For a full 30-minute sweat session, run through 6 rounds of the routine.

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