Many busy people around the world don’t want to spend hours commuting and queueing outside of gyms, but the desire for a flat stomach is stronger than ever. If you want to maximize the little time you have to create a fat loss workout at home, check out these fat burning exercises. The best workouts are always going to be those that consist of moves that engage multiple large muscle groups. You can easily take a simple, conventional toning move and turn it into something more efficient that gives you the most bang for your buck. While it takes a lot of different kinds of training to reach well-rounded fitness (strength training, cardio, stretching, etc.), total body strength training and HIIT (high-intensity interval training) are best for burning off body fat quickly. You’ll need to focus on cardio as well, so check out Lifehack’s free Simple Cardio Home Workout Plan to get started. Apply this concept to the exercises that make up your routines, and they become dynamic, fat-burning workouts. Here are the best examples of exercises that consume a lot of energy and don’t require any equipment.
The Best Fat Burning Exercises at Home
1. Burpees
No cardio compilation would be complete without burpees. They challenge every part of your body and send your heart rate soaring in no time. All this adds up to an exercise that burns about 10 calories per minute[1]. Assuming you’re doing between 10 and 20 repetitions every minute, this is one of the best fat burning exercises at home, or anywhere for that matter. You can torch even more calories by upping the pace. Just make sure you don’t let your form suffer!
2. Jumping Lunges
If you thought basic lunges were hard, you’ve never tried jump lunges before. This plyometric exercise strengthens all the same muscles, but it’ll also get your heart pounding in no time. To get started, simply lunge forward on your left leg as you bring your right arm forward and left arm back, elbows bent at 90-degree angles. From the lunge, jump straight into the air as you switch your arm and leg positions, then land with the opposite arm and leg in front. You’ll burn about 12 calories per minute, so you can really get in a good workout in a short amount of time.
3. Jumping Squats
This is one of the best fat burning exercises at home because it requires very little space and time, and it will build your leg and core strength in no time.
4. Push-ups
Push-ups are a total body exercise that are easily modified and can be made to be very challenging, even for the most avid exerciser. To make pushups easier, elevate your hands on a bench, counter-top, or against a wall. To make push-ups more difficult, elevate your feet. The higher the angle (with your hands on the ground), the more of your bodyweight you support. Also, you can increase the range of motion by elevating your hands on books, push up handles, or something similar. To burn more calories, you can also try plyometric push-ups, which involve pushing off your hands and hovering in the air for a moment at the top of the push-up. When talking about the best fat burning exercises at home, this one can’t stay off the list as it acts as a full body workout in itself.
5. Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers might win the award for most travel-friendly exercise because they require no equipment and take up hardly any space. On the flip side, they also deserve some recognition for being super challenging. A 150-pound person can expect to burn around 30 calories after three sets of 40 repetitions. You can easily incorporate any of these other moves to create a full workout, or simply go for as many sets as you can.
6. Jumping Jacks
This old-school warm-up is an effective form of cardio. The primary benefit of doing jumping jacks is that it elevates your heart rate. You breathe more deeply while jumping, which delivers oxygen to your bloodstream and, ultimately, to your muscles. In addition, you will also shake your lymphatic system and burn fat at a rapid rate[2], promoting weight loss. As extra challenge, do as many jumping jacks as possible for 10 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, then repeat the same routine for 20 seconds and 30 seconds.
What to Do With These Exercises
Each one of the above-mentioned fat burning exercises at home has the potential of consuming a lot of calories on its own. Pairing them or combining them can be an excellent way of creating a time-effective, fat-melting home workout. I have been coaching busy executives, moms, and dads for over a decade, and finding time-effective hotel room workouts has always been a skill of mine. In my experience with extremely busy clients all over the world, three types of routines give the best bang-for-your-buck results while also improving the rate of compliance (it’s useless to have the best routine if you don’t practice it). Let’s explore a few examples:
Daily Walks
This is the home fat-burning protocol baseline. It’s important to realize that no exercise routine will help you lose weight if you don’t make a point of getting your 10,000 daily steps. If you’re able to be out and about, aim to get 10,000 steps per day. Walking for at least 30 minutes serves as a great way to clear your head, manage stress, and keep fat gain to a minimum. This may not sound like a big deal, but getting around 10,000 steps per day may burn as many as 500 calories[3]. Taken over the week, that’s 3500 calories, or the same number of calories in a pound of fat. Walk in the morning, while doing meetings on the phone, after meals, or while you listen to podcasts. Walking time doesn’t need to be dead time. Bonus: When you go for your walks, press your tongue against the roof of your mouth and breathe through your nose. Nasal breathing has a ton of benefits including:
Better oxygen extraction, which can lead to more energy. Maintain a balanced pH in your body. Deep nasal breathing may decrease nerve activity in the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response). Increase Nitric oxide, which can improve the flow of nutrients into your body, improve waste disposal, and regulate blood pressure. Regulate workout intensity. Mouth breathing accelerates water loss, which can accelerate dehydration.
The Intermittent Training Protocol
This protocol should be the base of your exercise program, and it takes virtually no time. Do this every day: Pick one of the above-mentioned exercises and perform it with perfect form, as fast as you can, for 30 seconds, totally cold. If you have stiff joints or previous injuries, scale down the jumping version of the exercise with the static one (example: switch jumping squats with regular squats). Repeat this 2-3 times a day, every day. In his book, The Immunity Code, Joel Greene explains how quickly performing an exercise totally cold and at a totally random time of the day will prime your body to learn that particular movement pattern, improving strength, metabolic rate (and fat loss), and joint health. The secret of maintaining a young body may as well be being able to sprint from zero to hero or squat as fast as you can without a second notice (as our ancestors might have been doing their whole life). This intermittent training protocol takes almost no time and has an insane cumulative effect. Think about it: 30 squats, three times a day, for seven days is 30 x 3 x 7 = 630 squats that likely equal 1000 calories burned and virtually zero time consumed. A great idea is to do your chosen exercise each time you hit the toilet in order not to forget about it.
The 20-minute Hotel Room HIIT Workout
If you can cut 20 minutes, one to four times per week, you’re up for a sweaty, fat burning blast with the above fat burning exercises at home, or, in this case, a hotel. To do this, pick 4 of the above-mentioned exercises, and do them as fast as you can for 60 seconds, then rest for 2 minutes. Example of a lower body + core day:
1 minute of jumping jacks, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of jump squats, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of jump lunges, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of mountain climbers, rest 2 minutes Repeat 3-4 times
Example of an upper body + core day:
1 minute of jumping jacks, arms fully extended, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of push-ups, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of burpees, rest 10 seconds 1 minute of mountain climbers, rest 2 minutes Repeat 3-4 times
Final Thoughts
Over my 10+ years of experience as a trainer coaching TV celebrities, executives, CEOs, and a ton of average people looking for a great workout, I’ve learned that the only way to help people maintain a fitness routine is to create a fitness regime that can improve people’s lives rather than consume it. Going to the gym is great, but it’s a time-consuming activity, and it’s rarely a necessary one if your goal is to be lean, healthy, and energetic. Take the best fat burning exercises at home and turn them into the ultimate workout that will get you fit in no time.
More on the Best Fat Burning Exercises
How Long Does it Take to Build Muscle and Increase Fat Loss? 10 Effective Fat Burning Weight Loss Exercises To Do at Home 6 Ways High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) Can Significantly Boost Weight Loss Results How to Get Fit: The Ultimate Guide
Featured photo credit: Pavigym Prama via unsplash.com
