great, short, intense metabolic work | Goals and Motivation | Forum

Sorry I've been off the forum for a few days.  I'll explain why in an email later…

Anyway, I'm traveling again and decided my joints needed to take 5 days off from lifitng.  But I woke up and needed to do SOMETHING.  so I said "what can I do in 15 minutes that will not tax my joints, will burn fat, but won't erode muscle?"

Well, obviously a version of HIIT.  But I'm in a city with no easy way to go out and do sprints.  The little gym here has dumbbells so here's what I did:

- supersetting dumbell hang cleans, with push press, then drop to the floor and do pushups; kind of like a burpee but more heavily loaded; I did 3 sets of 12 with 40 pound DBs, and only rested 15 seconds between sets; when I was done, I felt wasted but only took ab out 4 minutes!

- 100 jumping jacks, then rest 15 seconds

- 3 sets of jumping burpees; I went until I couldn't do any more each set; I think my last set I was so tired I only got like 6 reps!  15 seconds rest between

- sprinted 5 flights of stairs

- walked back to my room

Total time:  just under 20 minutes (including my warm ups which I didn't mention).

Moral:  even when you have no time and no real equipment, you can do intense exercise.  No excuses!