A 15-Minute Dumbbell HIIT Workout From The Body Coach

If you are looking to burn fat and tone up your muscles, one of the best things you can do is to do a high intensity HIIT workout with dumbbells. That’s because the cardio element of these workouts will help you burn fat, whilst the dumbbell exercises will obviously help with muscle toning.

There are quite a few of these workouts on YouTube, but Joe Wicks, who is also known as The Body Coach on Instagram (where he now has over 1.9 million followers), has recently developed a workout that combines these two elements with great effect:

This workout is 15 minutes long and all you need is a set of dumbbells (and maybe a stop watch for timing purposes). Joe uses 10 kg dumbbells in this video, but you can use lighter dumbbells than this if you are just starting out.

There are 5 exercises in total and you should aim to do each exercise for 40 seconds and then rest for 20 seconds before moving on to the next one. So one round of exercises will take 5 minutes to complete, and you should do 3 rounds altogether to complete the full 15-minute workout.

Here are the exercises that are included in this workout:

Mountain Climbers

The first exercise doesn’t actually involve dumbbells, but it will get your heart pumping straight away because you basically need to get into a push-up position and then drive your knees to your chest one after the other. The important point here is to keep your back as flat as possible.

Bicep Curls

The next exercise is the classic bicep curl, and in this instance you just need to lift the dumbbells one arm at a time for 40 seconds. Once again form is very important, so you should aim to focus purely on your biceps. If you find yourself using your shoulders or back to help you lift the weights, you should lower the weight of the dumbbells.

One-Legged Burpees

Many people are familiar with burpees, but in this particular exercise you will be doing one leg at a time. So after placing your hands on the floor, you need to push one leg back, bring it back and then hop up into a standing position (still using one leg). As you might expect, this is even harder than a normal burpee, which is why it is so effective.

Dumbbell Floor Press

The next move is similar to the classic bench press, but in this case you are lying on the floor and pushing the dumbbells upwards and together, with your hands pointing inwards so that your palms are facing each other. This particular exercise will really work your chest and triceps.

Reverse Lunges

The final exercise is the reverse lunge, where you basically push your legs right back one at a time until your knee touches the floor, and then push up off this leg back to the starting position. This should be done whilst holding a set of dumbbells by your side, and will really help to tone up and strengthen your legs. You just need to remember not to bend your front knee too far forward when performing these lunges, and try to keep your back straight.

Closing Comments

If you watch the whole video, you will notice that Joe struggles to complete the workout towards the latter stages and is really starting to feel it in his shoulders. So unless you are already supremely fit, you may struggle to complete the workout as well.

If so, just try to do as many rounds as you can to start off with because you should find that it gets easier over time as your fitness improves and your muscles become stronger.

What I like about this particular HIIT workout is that you can burn fat and build muscle at the same time, and it is suitable for both men and women. Plus you can easily do this routine at home because all you need is a set of dumbbells.

However if you don’t like this particular workout for whatever reason, you might like to check out Joe’s top-selling fitness DVD because this has seven different HIIT workouts that you can use for weight loss and toning, or his new DVD for 2017/18 that has nine brand new HIIT workouts altogether.