WORKOUT

Focus & Ben­e­fits: Let’s get our heart rate up togeth­er in this low-impact, all-stand­ing car­dio HIIT work­out. You can com­plete it with body­weight only, though adding light dumb­bells will add some spice! Descend­ing inter­vals make this rou­tine a fun men­tal chal­lenge as we work from long to short inter­vals, chal­leng­ing our­selves to add some inten­si­ty with each short­ened round. You’ll be sure to get sweaty with­out any added impact to the joints and min­i­mal equip­ment needed.

Equip­ment: None; light dumb­bells rec­om­mend­ed but not required (I use 3lb weights)

Tips & Help­ful Infor­ma­tion: Chang­ing up the for­mat of your work­out can be an excit­ing change and keep things feel­ing fresh. For this work­out in par­tic­u­lar, we’ll be using a descend­ing inter­val struc­ture where we focus on one exer­cise at a time. We’ll per­form 3 rounds for 40 sec, 30 sec, and 20 sec with 15 sec rest between each. I’ll encour­age you to approach each round with more inten­si­ty as the inter­vals get short­er, mak­ing for a ​“fun” men­tal challenge!

This work­out is a hybrid of car­dio­vas­cu­lar and HIIT train­ing and you’ll be going in and out of each zone. Some points in the work­out will feel more steady-state (ie the longer inter­vals) where­as oth­er points will have you push­ing hard­er and feel more breath­less (ie the short­er inter­vals). This makes it approach­able for any­one want­i­ng to dab­ble in HIIT with­out doing a full high-inten­si­ty inter­val workout.

Let’s talk about weights and if you should use them. The lev­el 3 dif­fi­cul­ty of this rou­tine fac­tors in the usage of light dumb­bells (I’m using 3lb). You can tech­ni­cal­ly do this entire rou­tine with body­weight and it will still be effec­tive. How­ev­er, I do rec­om­mend using light weights if you have them avail­able to you! As always, I encour­age you to lis­ten to your body and make weight selec­tions based on that.

Dif­fi­cul­ty & Mod­i­fi­ca­tions Explained: This work­out is a lev­el 3 of 5 dif­fi­cul­ty due to the low-impact, all-stand­ing nature of the exer­cis­es. You can eas­i­ly scale this down by remov­ing the dumb­bells and work­ing at a more mod­er­ate pace. On the flip­side, you can eas­i­ly scale this to a lev­el 4 by using the dumb­bells and increas­ing your pace. If the rest peri­ods feel too long, you can jog or box­er shuf­fle in place to keep moving.

Clos­ing Note: I hope this work­out shows you (or any­one who dreads a car­dio day) that car­dio CAN be fun. Let’s tack­le the next 30 min­utes togeth­er. We’ve got it!

Rec­om­men­da­tions: If you like this for­mat, you may also to like try this work­out with the same format:

Low-Impact HIIT Lad­ders [33 min | Lev­el 3]

– WORK­OUT OUTLINE –

Warmup (4:40) — 40 sec each
Over/​Unders
Arm Swing and Hug
Side Lunge Shift with Reach
Pull­down with March
Curt­sy Step with OH Cross Reach, alt
Tem­po Squat – 3÷1÷3÷1
Ski­er Swing, no weight

Work­out (20:00) — Com­plete one exer­cise for 40 sec­onds, 30 sec­onds, and 20 sec­onds (15 sec rest between each) before mov­ing on to the next exercise.

Side to Side Squat Jacks
Curt­sy Skier
Sumo Stance 4pt Jabs
Alt Cross Reach Shuffle

WATER BREAK

March and Press
Run­ner Tap­backs – alter­nate every 4
Side Lunge with Around the World, alternating
Sumo Over­head Swing

Cooldown (4:00) — 30 sec each
Wide Leg Ham­string Stretch
Side Lunge Stretch – R
Runner’s Lunge to Ham­string Rock – R
Side Lunge Stretch – L
Runner’s Lunge to Ham­string Rock – L
Kneel­ing Shoul­der Stretch – R
Kneel­ing Shoul­der Stretch – L
Neck Stretch