30 Minute Fat Burning Body Weight Workout

If you're looking for lots of serious fat melting, calorie crushing, ab revealing results from your workout, this is for you.

There are a lot of reasons to hit a workout like this, including travel, or just being plain busy, or you can't make it to the gym. Or hey, maybe you're just tired of paying that monthly gym membership!

We're going to fire up two exercises and 30 minutes of your time. The two exercises are bodyweight squats and push ups.

The idea is to get as many reps as possible in 30 minutes. A cycle may go like this.

Bodyweight squats - 30 reps

Push Ups - 15 reps

Repeat (resting when necessary)

In order to get a little static contraction back work in as well, be sure to hold your arms straight out in front of you for all your squat reps. Or lightly lace your fingers behind your head and do the bodyweight squats in “prisoner” style.

On the squats, go as low as you can on each rep, under control. Pause for a second at the bottom of the repetition.

Now, your strength level may vary a lot so I'm going to give you a list of bodyweight squat and push up variations so you can make this routine tougher or easier on you, as needed.

Strength levels can vary widely for people in bodyweight exercises. While someone may crank out 50 push ups non stop, someone else might only get two. So here are some variations for you.

For bodyweight squats you can do the following:

* Half Squats (don't go down all the way, stop around top of thighs parallel to ground)

* Full Squats (down as far as you can go)

* Close Squats (feet turned out about 45 degrees with heels an inch apart, or touching if you can handle it). Arms pointed straight out in front of you.

Push Ups:

* Wall Push Ups

* Incline Push Ups (standing and leaning forward into a bench or table, so you're lower than leaning
into a wall)

* Kneeling Push Ups

* Half Push Ups (put something like a ball or stack of books under your chest)

* Full Push Ups

You could do:

Bodyweight squats - 20 reps

Push Ups - 10 reps

Repeat (resting when necessary)

OR:

Bodyweight squats - 10 reps

Push Ups - 5 reps

Repeat (resting when necessary)

Give this routine a try for 20 minutes, or 30 if you're up to it. See how many reps you can get (30 may be too much on the squats. Try 20). You can adjust the push up number as well.

Even 20 minutes might be too brutal to start. You'd be surprised how much you can make 10 minutes of this hurt!

Next time you do it, try beating your rep total.

If you have one simple piece of equipment (a chin up bar) you can make it a tri-set with Bodyweight squats, push ups and pull ups (or inverted rows if you can do that).

You can also flip it. Instead of trying to hit a certain number of rounds in a set time, you can set a rep total and go for time, trying to beat that time in a future workout.

So maybe you go for 200 squats and 100 push ups (whatever variation you choose) with the same rule of double the squat reps to push up reps each time before going back to squats.

Really feeling it? 400 bodyweight squats and 200 push ups! Come on, Rocky!

Brutal, short and effective. Give it a try and let me know how you do.

If you want more great tips to help you get in great shape this year, take a look at my new ebook 

Fitness Hacks: 52 Secrets that You Need to Know

Eric Dempsey

MS, NASM Weight Loss Specialist

Dempseys Resolution Fitness