Battle the bulge with the Bikini Fit home workout!

Christmas has come and gone and our gym budget got lost somewhere between Zara and Asos during the Boxing Day sales. We’re finding it hard to muster up enough motivation to get out of bed let alone enroll ourselves into fitness classes, and we can’t quite face going for a run just yet. But our skinny jeans still don’t fit the way they quite did before the Christmas season and what was once a bulge is turning into a muffin top.

 Fear not! We have enlisted the fat blasting and tummy toning expert trainer Bikini Fit Trish to tell us how to banish the blubber at home. So get your Jane Fonda lycra out from the back of the closet, pull up those leg warmers and get your bootilicious body bikini ready for 2014 with Trish’s advice below!

As part of the Bikini Fit community, we are committed to providing our members with individualised travel workouts based on the equipment (or lack of!) available to them while on the road. These are a few of our favourite bodyweight routines that can be done absolutely anywhere, so there’s no excuse for not getting a daily workout in! Don’t forget to warm-up first, a quick and effective warm-up uses dynamic stretches and reduces the risk of injury. Try doing 20 air squats, 20 side squats, 20 forward lunges and 1 minute of jumping jacks.

The Quickie (Anywhere)
If you don’t have much time, this is a really short workout that you can do with very little space and the only thing you need is a chair/ledge.

Perform the following movements and number of reps continuously, with no rest in between until the end and using an all-out effort:

10 jumping jacks
10 air squats
10 squat jumps
10 forward lunges
10 tricep dips using a chair/ledge
10 mountain climbers (left and right leg = 1 rep)
10 burpees
Plank hold for 60 seconds.

1-2 minute rest

Repeat 5 times (or more!) depending on how much time you have.

Tip:

• Use the stopwatch on your phone to time how long it takes you to complete a round, and on each subsequent round, try to beat that time.

The Ab Fab Workout (Anywhere)
Grab a thick towel or yoga mat or make sure you have some soft flooring, this workout aims to work core strength using bodyweight movements.

The 3 minute blast:

30 seconds single leg v-situps
30 seconds double leg v-situps
30 seconds bicycle situps
30 seconds plank hold on elbows
30 seconds side plank hold on one side
30 seconds side plank hold on opposite side

Rest 1 minute

Repeat!

Followed by:

1. Hand walkouts
2. Leg raises for 3x 1 minute rounds with 15 seconds rest in between each round.
3. Hand to elbow pushups
4. Plank hold on elbows and at the same time, jumping feet out wide and back in continuously for 3 x 45 second rounds with 15 seconds rest in between each round.
5. Wall sits for 3 x 1 minute rounds.

Tip:

• If you have a partner, you can finish the workout with 1 minute rounds of leg throw downs. One person is lying with their back on the floor and holding the ankles of their partner who is standing. The person who is standing, grabs the ankles of the person lying down and throws their legs down. The person who is lying down needs to try to stop their feet from touching the ground but come as close to the ground as possible, and then bring them back up.

The Stair/Hill Circuit (Outdoors)
You will need to find a flight of stairs or uphill incline that will take about 20-30 seconds to sprint up. For the runners out there, this high intensity interval circuit will help you improve your running speed with the use of sprint training. Make sure you’re going flat out on each sprint, using the downhill to actively recover. Rest 2 minutes between each round.

Round 1:

1 minute of mountain climbers
5 stair/hill sprints
20 chest pushups
20 speed hand walkouts (get your body as horizontal to the ground as possible)
1 minute wall sit

Round 2: Repeat all the movements in Round 1, but do 4 stair/hill sprints.
Round 3: Repeat all the movements in Round 1, but do 3 stair/hill sprints.
Round 4: Repeat all the movements in Round 1, but do 2 stair/hill sprints.
Round 5: Repeat all the movements in Round 1, but do 1 stair/hill sprint.

Tip:

• If you can’t find a set of stairs or uphill, you can also do sprints on flat ground. So find a park or football field, and get sprinting!

Images sourced via Pinterest