Kicking off Week 2 of our Bikini Tabata series today with this lower body focused cardio smash – get ready to challenge yourself in a workout that takes less than 10 minutes!
If you haven’t tried the first workout in this series yet, you’ll love it! It’s a Full Body Tabata and you can do it with me right here.
Just to recap, tabatas are extremely effective fat-burning workouts we can do in a short amount of time (just 4 minutes per round).
Scroll down below today’s workout description for the 3-Essential Components of Fat Loss.
I’ve included some strength-building resistance moves in the mix to lift and sculpt the booty and legs!
Let me know how you do with today’s workout – looking forward to hearing your check-ins! Comment below!
Bikini Tabata Series 2: Booty and Legs
Click to expand and see all workout move descriptions.TABATA ONE
Move 1: Jump Squats
- Begin with your feet just slightly wider than hip distance, core engaged, chest up.
- Squat, driving your hips back as if you were going to sit on a chair. Don’t bend forward at your waist, keep your chest lifting.
- Jump up, using your arms to propel you. Land lightly and repeat.
- Mod: Squat back, bringing your hands down toward your feet. Squeeze your glutes and come up into a strong body squat, allowing your arms to fully extend overhead.
Move 2: Reverse Lunge to Knee Drive
- From a standing position, step your right foot back into a reverse lunge. Keep your chest up, and your left knee should track in line with your left toe.
- Press through the left heel. Your right knee should be straight behind you, hovering over the floor.
- Use your arms to coordinate your balance as you thrust your right knee forward and up to your chest. Repeat on the same leg for the full 0:20 set. You’ll switch legs each set.
- Mod: Hold onto the wall beside you as needed. Leave out the knee drive and work on stepping in and out of reverse lunge.
TABATA TWO
Move 1: Box Jumpover Squat
- Place any low object you can easily step onto in the center of your mat. You could pile up a few bath towels, old pillows, a couple of yoga blocks taped together, you could use a bosu ball (advanced) or a low kitchen stool.
- Start to the right of your box, and skip step both feet to the box, then step your right foot off and to the mat, leaving your left foot on the box.
- Come into a staggered sumo squat, shooting your butt behind you and keeping your core engaged and chest up.
- Skip the right foot back into center up onto the box and repeat on the left.
- Mod: Take the elevation out and skip side to side, coming into sumo squats on either side. You can also step to the right and sumo squat, then step to the left and sumo squat to take the speed element out.
Move 2: Hamstring Runners
- For this move, you’ll need something to slide on. Hardwood floors you can use towels or your socks, carpeted floors you can use magazine covers, or paper or plastic plates.
- Come into a reverse plank, with your hands below your shoulders and your hips lifted, legs straight. Feet on your sliders.
- Keeping your hips up, begin alternately sliding your feet in to a 90 degree angle, pressing down through your heels to really activate the hamstrings.
- Mod: Balance your back and upper body on the side of your couch, ottoman or a chair to make it a little easier on your arms and shoulders.
Great job on today’s workout! Now let’s get you a workout PLAN so you can keep progressing and get support along the way!
Rock Your Life has access to dozens of home workout challenges, a huge class library with hundreds of workouts of all types so you can choose from a huge variety of one-off workouts if you’re not following a plan, and has a private women’s fitness support community to make sure you always have the resources you need!
Get a 30-day Trial to ROCK YOUR LIFE and start your challenge!
3 Essential Components of Fat Loss
First, fat is NOT the devil. We need a healthy amount of body fat for normal body function.
However, a lot of us have fallen victim to sedentary lifestyles and a lot of marketing hype from fad diets and food manufacturers – and are struggling to get the extra fat off around trouble areas.
To burn off body fat, we want to focus on a combination of balanced, whole-food nutrition, explosive cardio and resistance training that adds lean muscle.
1 – Explosive Cardio
Explosive cardio (like this tabata series and the programs I write) systemically targets fat burning, helping to reduce your overall body fat.
I mentioned in the 4-step flat stomach guide that while we can’t “spot reduce” (a million crunches won’t burn the fat off your abs), the fat WILL come off in the order it went on if we consistently approach it with these principles.
Recommendation: 2-3 times a week.
2 – Why do we want lean muscle?
Muscle supports your joints and skeletal structure. It makes us stronger and more efficient not only in our workouts, but in everyday activities too.
It burns more calories at rest than fat, effectively helping you to be fat-burning machine even when you’re sitting at your desk.
When I’m not in the gym (or not using weights), I still incorporate resistance training into my workouts taking advantage of gravity, complex movements, tough balancing moves, sliders and more – all the kinds of things you can find in the workouts we do together in my classes, my online programs and workouts here on the blog.
Recommendation: 2-3 times a week.
A great way to combine resistance training and explosive cardio if you’re mostly doing home workouts is to use workouts that have both types of moves written into them (circuit training style), and follow a 3-4 workout a week plan. Add in one additional day depending on your fitness level and time availability.
3 – Dial in Your Nutrition
Nutrition is the final – and I’d say most essential – piece, because while your workouts can still help you get stronger, it will be harder to drop body fat if you’re eating the wrong combination of nutrients, or not eating enough nutrients.
It’s very important to know that the fat that we eat from whole foods does NOT just “turn into body fat.” Healthy fat from nuts, seeds, eggs, avocados, grass-fed yogurt (if you tolerate dairy well) and responsibly raised meat has important functions in our body that are essential for a healthy metabolism.
To balance your plate, focus on getting protein with every meal. Your body can’t make all of the amino acids it needs for its metabolic functions and has an amino acid pool it draws from that needs consistent replenishment. Eating a variety of wholesome protein sources throughout the day is a great way to ensure you have what you need.
Include carbohydrates that come from whole-food sources your body can readily use. I recommend a combination of sprouted, fermented or soaked grains (overnight oatmeal, sprouted rice or quinoa, fermented miso) and fibrous vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes and squash.
Fruit is also excellent, and a quick source of energy but higher in fructose, which gets used differently than its slower-digesting carb counterparts that I mentioned first.
I recommend including your complex carbohydrates with your first meal of the day and in your meal that follows your workout.
Include healthy fats and don’t eat fat-free foods. The most common foods that cause fat storage are the highly processed foods, many of them labeled to make us think they’re better for us with catch phrases like “fat-free, sugar-free, natural sugar,” etc.
Beware of foods that have the fat stripped out – to make them palatable, they’re often loaded with sugar and/or sodium.
Avoid foods that are “sugar-free” – they usually have a lot of extra sodium and in many cases sugar substitutes and additives that aren’t as easy for the body to process.
Recommendation: Last but not least, what has helped me the MOST over the years is learning about nutrition and my body so I can choose to eat mindfully.
That doesn’t mean I’m eating “perfectly clean meals 24/7, 365.” That means I choose these balanced nutrients most of the time, and choose to deviate from this guilt-free when the occasion calls for it.
It’s a lifestyle – not a diet. Arm yourself with knowledge and empower yourself to LIVE in the body you create by choice, not by chance.
Let me make healthy eating easy for you! Take my Eating Type Quiz!
References:
Dutchen, Stephanie National Institute of General Medical Sciences What do fats do in the body? 12-2010
