5 Kick Butt HIIT Exercises To Burn Calories

Looking to shed fat faster with your fitness plan? If you’ve been working hard toward reaching your bodyweight goals but have yet to incorporate HIIT training into your regime, now is the time to start.

HIIT has been proven to be a superior fat burning compared to any form of steady state training – which includes all those hours you’ve spent on the treadmill, bike, or elliptical trainer.

While those exercises may help boost your heart health slightly, they are doing very little to really crank up the dial on total body fat burning, improved fitness capacity, and enhanced metabolic rate.

With HIIT, you don’t just burn more fat while you do it, but you’ll burn more fat after it’s completed as well.

All of this said, you need to know which exercises serve as perfect choices for a HIIT program.

Let’s go over 5 kick-butt HIIT exercises that you should consider trying out for yourself.

Squats

To kick things off, we have the basic move of the squat.  But, it’s anything but basic when it comes to fat burning.  Since squats work every single muscle group in the lower body as well as stimulating the abs to maintain optimal muscle contraction, you’ll see great strengthening and defining benefits from this move.

Additionally, they’ll help to boost your heart rate significantly, ensuring that you are getting that cardiovascular element you need for a true HIIT workout session.

Perform a set of 20-30 squats, rest for 30 seconds, then repeat this process 10 times through. You’ll be feeling it by the end of the workout.

Alternatively, try the 200 Squats Challenge. It’s a great primer to prepare for this workout.

Burpees

The next great HIIT workout to give a try next time you want a challenge is the burpee workout.  To do this one, you’ll set a timer for 60 seconds.  Perform as many burpees as you can possibly do within that 60 seconds, stopping as needed to rest.

Then once the 60 seconds is up, rest for 30. Then repeat this five more times through.  It’ll be a short workout, but a very effective one.

Skipping (Jump Roping)

Skipping is another great exercise to consider for your HIIT training.  It’s more of a traditional cardio form of training, so will be great for those who do enjoy this style of exercise.

To make this a HIIT session, skip as hard as you can for 30 seconds and then rest for 30.  Then repeat this process another 10 times as you complete the workout session.

As you advance your fitness, you can focus on increasing the total time that you spend skipping, bringing it up to 60 seconds while reducing the time that you spend resting.

For an advanced level skipper, aim for 60 seconds of skipping time with 20 seconds of rest, repeated 10 times through for the entire workout session.

Be sure when doing this one that you are skipping on a padded surface so as to not put your knees, back, and ankles at risk for injury.

Hill Runs

Hill runs serve as the next excellent way to challenge your body with HIIT training. For these, you’ll simply find a hill somewhere nearby and run up as fast as you can. Ideally the hill should be large enough that it takes at least 15 seconds to run up.

One finished, walk back down.

Then run up again and keep repeating this process another 10-20 times, depending on your fitness level.

This is a far better option than a flat running workout because the hill is going to serve to really hit all those lower body muscles, providing a great strengthening workout as you work your cardiovascular fitness level.

Push-Ups

Finally, if you’re relatively new to fitness, a HIIT workout can be done using plain push-ups.  Set the clock for this one again and see how many you can do in a 45 second time period.  Once the 45 seconds are up, rest for another 45 seconds. Then repeat this again five more times through.

Like with squats, you can also sign up for the PushUp Trainer Pro, which will help you execute this workout with ease.

So there you have five great HIIT workout ideas.  Remember that you shouldn’t be doing these workouts each and every day or you will quickly overtrain. Instead, aim to perform them every other day, or 2-3 times per week.  This will be sufficient to taking your fitness to the next level and seeing the fat burning results you’re after.

What is your favorite HIIT workout program? Share it so that others can benefit.