You’re somebody that loves running because it keeps you fit, but it’s also cheap. You don’t need to drop thousands on a gym membership, a home gym or a treadmill – you just need a route and a pair of reliable runners.
Unfortunately, you’re exhausted after a long day’s work, and a miserable commute home. Throwing on your Asics, and grinding through an hour-plus of steady state cardio seems more fantasy than fact. You also need be in bed early for another busy day tomorrow, but you don’t want to get into bad habits and start skipping out on exercise.
Don’t sweat it, because here are three convenient and cost effective high intensity interval training (HIIT)cardio workouts designed for travelling no further than your own driveway.
1. Burpees
Burpees may sound like an unappealing bodily function, but they produce results that are undoubtedly appealing. After completing a jumping jack, you must drop to the ground, complete a push-up while exploding back up to your feet. Rinse, repeat.
The demon offspring of a jumping jack and a push-up, burpees are a full-body exercise that builds your functional strength while rapidly burning calories. Best of all, they can be done in your living room, costs nothing, and leaves you exhausted in the time it would take you to make and eat a sandwich.
What to do: Beginners should aim for 100 burpees in under 15 minutes. If you’re more intermediate, aim for 100 burpees in 7 minutes or less. If you can’t achieve these goals, be mindful that when it comes to fitness, failure is a good thing- unless it’s a failure to be active.
Perfect form is of the utmost importance in order to avoid injuries as well as getting the most bang for your proverbial workout buck. Click here for a detailed, step-by-step breakdown.
2. Jump rope
Skipping rope isn’t only for Rocky Balboa or 7-year-olds playing double Dutch. A rope is cheap, and you only have to travel as far as your driveway to use it. While beginners may take extra time to learn the skill, once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll experience a demanding full body cardio workout in a short amount of time.
The jump rope offers a low impact, high efficiency workout, putting minimal stress on your joints while garnering maximum fitness results. It also develops footspeed, coordination and explosiveness.
What to do: For an amazing beginner skip rope routine, click here (start the video at 56 seconds).
If you’re experienced, you can freestyle, but attempt to raise the bar and aim for 1000-1500 touches without stopping and limited mistakes, while applying the principles of HIIT cardio. If you’re proficient, you’ll be able to perform more complex maneuvers such as crosses and the double-under.
Realistically, a comprehensive full body workout can be completed in 20-25 minutes or less, all while standing in the same, very tiny radius.
3. Jumping bodyweight lunges
If the jumping bodyweight lunge is in your workout toolkit, nobody will ever accuse you of skipping leg day, and you’ll elevate your heart rate enough to ensure you aren’t sacrificing cardio for muscle growth. A bare bones movement, you could feasibly do them in in your bedroom. They build your legs both athletically and aesthetically, while adding a wrinkle to your plyometric game.
The best part of course, this exercise costs precisely $0.
What to do: Don’t get ahead of yourself: doing jumping lunges for more than a minute straight could lead to injury, given their reliance on tight form and a strong core. If you’re comfortable with the exercise, see if you can do five sets of 30 (15 on each leg). Couple them with push-ups, planks or if you’re feeling particularly masochistic (or crunched for time), tag team them with the aforementioned burpees.
With the right superset or circuit, you’ll be exhausted in 20 minutes or less, with full bragging rights about never skipping leg day.
If you need a full breakdown of the jumping bodyweight lunge, click here for a comprehensive explanation.
If these three cost, time and cardio-efficient workouts don’t seem enough to fill your fitness appetite, and you’re looking for something else to fill your workout schedule, SEMI’s professional fitness trainers in Toronto can devise a workout circuit to help you achieve your fitness goals.
Join us in our modern studio settings, and take advantage of the private environment, so you can focus entirely on your exercises with zero distractions. Call us at 1-855-572-9177, or book an appointment today!
