Supercharge your strength and burn fat with this 20 minute bodyweight HIIT workout

No time to hit the gym? No problem. A good workout doesn’t always have to take place surrounded by a ton of iron anyway (as you’ll soon discover). This 20 minute HIIT workout will not only smoke your entire body, but it’ll leave your metabolism fired for hours afterwards, helping you burn fat. You may not need any equipment for it but you will want a decent pair of workout shoes on your feet and your gym water bottle, for sure.

This workout ups the ante even more than a regular HIIT workout as it's Tabata-inspired. ‘What’s Tabata?’ you ask. Tabata is a style of HIIT which involves 20 seconds of work, followed by a 10 second rest, so it’s very high intensity. However, the National Academy of Sport Medicine says it has some great benefits, including improving your aerobic levels (cardio) and anaerobic capacity (power), as well as an increase in excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, where you continue to burn calories for hours post-workout. 

The workout

This workout from Alo Moves instructor, Myles Rodney, is split into two circuits. In each circuit you've got eight exercises that you'll complete Tabata-style (20 secs on/10 secs off) and you'll do two rounds of each circuit. Complete two rounds of circuit one first (give yourself a 20 second break between your circuit rounds), then take a 30 second break before moving onto circuit two. Ready? Here's your workout:

Circuit 1 - the lower body burner

• Squats
• Squat hold
• Jumping squats
• Shoulder taps
• Lunge with knee drive (right leg)
• Lunge with knee drive (left leg)
• Russian twist
• Mountain climbers

Circuit 2 - the core and full-body killer

• Flutter kicks
• Bicycle crunches
• Commando plank
• Burpees
• Glute bridges
• High knees
• Plank
• Spider climbers

We told you it was going to burn but, in all seriousness, well done if you kept up with that as it is not an easy workout. If you fancy more high-intensity challenges like this one, then give this six-move HIIT workout a try next, or our ultimate fat-burning HIIT workout using just seven bodyweight exercises. Also, don't forget a fitness tracker is a well-worth investment for these styles of workouts so you can track the number of calories you burn, as well as monitor your VO2 max and heart rate.