The 5 Best No-Excuse Fat Burning Workouts

Incorporating exercise into your routine will help you improve your physique, and also contributes to your overall health. Some of the biggest excuses we hear from people on why they don’t exercise are: I don’t have time; I can’t afford a gym membership; I’m too embarrassed to go the gym; or I don’t need to exercise if I eat healthy. There are literally hundreds of excuses people tell themselves as to why they can’t or don’t need to exercise, but really in order to accelerate your weight loss and live a longer, healthier life, exercise is necessary.

Not only do you need to exercise to supplement your nutrition plan, but it is essential for things like bone & joint and cardiovascular health, among other things. We have put together a short list of exercises that anyone can do in a limited amount of time, no matter your fitness level. Don’t worry if you start out only being able to do a few of each – remember, everyone has to start somewhere! So, stop making up excuses, and start burning fat today with these 5 simple exercises.

The following 5 fat burning workouts and exercise can be performed without a gym membership or any sort of fitness equipment!

Squats

The squat is arguably one of the most calorie burning exercises. When preformed correctly, you’re working muscles in your thighs, hips, glutes, and core. Additionally, when you use weights like a barbell or dumbbells, you are now engaging your arms and shoulders, stimulating more muscles groups and increasing your body’s fat burning potential. Remember when squatting to make sure you are on a stable surface, your legs are about shoulder width apart (although if you need them to be a bit wider to maintain your balance that’s fine) and also be sure not to let your knees get too far in front of your toes. I equate the action of squats to that of sitting down on a chair, but there is no chair.

Dips

What’s so great about dips is that they are an awesome upper body workout, but also that they can be done almost anywhere with many variations: on your chair at work, at the bench in the park or even while you wait in line at the theme park. The major muscles worked are your triceps, but also your shoulders, back and chest are required to be engaged in this exercise. All you need is a stable surface where you can place both hands and lower your body. It’s that easy and effective.

Push-ups

While push-ups will certainly increase upper body strength, especially in your chest and triceps, they are also an excellent core exercise that requires the use of your abdominal, oblique, back and lower leg muscles. If you have a weak upper body, remember a pushup can always be performed on your knees until you build up your strength. From there they can always get more difficult by either bringing your arms in closer together, doing them on an uneven surface (using a medicine ball to alternate arms) and even adding dumbbells to the work load.

Burpees

Burpees were invented to literally eliminate body fat. They combine several basic exercises such as a the push-up, squat, jumping and some hip thrusting. This exercise works your chest, triceps, core, quads, hamstrings, glutes and hip flexors, all while also working your cardiovascular system, increasing blood flow in your body. You start in a standing position, go into a high plank, then bring yourself back to a standing position by thrusting you knees towards your chest; you can always add a jump at the end or pushup while in the plank position to increase the difficulty. After just a few you will certainly start to feel a shortness of breath, and may even feel  your body warming up and start sweating. That is the burpeee.

Mountain Climbers

Mountain climbers, much like the burpee, are a full-body blast. You’re working your abs, arms, hamstrings, quads, and glutes. You should make sure that your butt isn’t high in the air and that you try to keep your back straight when you’re bringing your knees towards your chest in a climbing motion. You will quickly raise your heart rate by performing just a few sets of mountain climbers.

Now that you’ve got 5 good fat burning exercises, you have a baseline of where to start. You can begin your workout routine by doing a few rounds of each exercise.

A good start would be:

25 Body Squats
15 Chair Dips
10 push ups
10 burpee’s
30 seconds of Mountain Climbers

Repeat 3x.

Remember you can always add more sets/reps, add more time, and make each exercise harder, the point is to get your heart rate up and start burning calories.