Trying to lose belly fat and love handles? Check out these top 10 HIIT exercises that should help you achieve just that.
Excess belly fat not only affects appearance but also poses health risks. Fortunately, you can try High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) even when short on time. HIIT involves intense cardiovascular workouts with all-out effort, promising real results. For weight loss, explore these 10 HIIT exercises to increase your calorie expenditure.
Max Posternak, founder of Gravity Transformation—a platform providing fitness and weight loss tips—originally shared this list. His YouTube channel boasts over 5.5 million subscribers, making him a reliable source for effective training guidance.
10 HIIT Exercises to Lose Belly Fat and Love Handles Faster
Max Posternak emphasizes that reducing belly fat requires more than just exercise—it primarily depends on maintaining a proper diet.
Nevertheless, certain fat-burning exercises can aid in weight loss, several of which can be performed at home. Belly fat and love handles are challenging to eliminate, but shedding excess body fat is essential for overall health and well-being.
Posternak discourages the use of crunches and sit-ups as they do not burn significant calories and cannot target midsection fat specifically. Instead, he emphasizes self-control in dietary habits for achieving desired results.
While diet remains crucial for calorie intake, incorporating high-calorie burning exercises can boost weekly fat burning across the body, including the midsection.
Here are the best 10 HIIT exercises to lose belly fat and love handles faster according to him:
1. Medicine Ball Slams
Using a slam ball or sandbag, perform this exercise with a full-body movement. When the ball is overhead, engage the hips and core to slam it forcefully into the ground. Repeat for repetitions.
2. Cable Woodchopper
Attach a D-handle to the bottom of the cable cross. This rotational exercise strengthens rotational muscles, crucial for preventing injuries.
3. Weighted Burpee
An excellent calorie-burning exercise, weighted burpees can be done with body weight for beginners, reducing the impact by walking the feet in and out instead of jumping.
This movement is similar to the devil press.
4. Kettlebell Swings
Kettlebell exercises, like swings, elevate heart rate and help burn a considerable number of calories. The average person can burn 400 calories in just 20 minutes of kettlebell workout.
10 Awesome Kettlebell Workouts for Beginners
5. Kettlebell Long Cycle
This exercise is advised after mastering regular kettlebell swings.
6. Battle Rope
Various battle rope exercises can burn calories and aid in belly fat loss, including alternating speed rope slams, overhead rope slams, and rotational slams.
How to Get Stronger and Fitter Using the Battle Rope (Workouts Included)
7. Prowler / Sled
Pushing a heavy prowler or sled engages multiple major muscle groups and significantly elevates heart rate, making it an efficient calorie-burning exercise.
Source: Reebok8. Mountain Climbers
These can be performed anywhere, but using suspension training like TRX can maximize the benefits of this exercise.
9. Hammer Swing
This exercise involves gripping a hammer with both hands, swinging the arms wide, pulling the hips out, and slamming the tire.
10. Turkish Get-Up
Using dumbbells, kettlebells, or barbells, this exercise is effective for calorie burning.
Best Turkish Get-Up WODs for Ridiculous Strength and a Better Body
For detailed explanations on why each movement is an excellent HIIT exercise for losing belly fat, Posternak has shared a video that offers further insights. With dedication to both a healthy diet and a consistent exercise routine, individuals can achieve their goal of reducing belly fat and improving overall fitness levels.
5 Best Exercises to Lose Belly Fat At Home
How to Combine HIIT and LISS to Lose Fat Faster
Compound movements.
Besides incorporating these 10 HIIT exercises to help you lose belly fat and love handles, you should also aim to consistently do compound exercises.
Compound exercises are effective for building strength because they work multiple muscle groups at once. They also recruit more muscle fibers than isolation exercises do. This means that compound moves build muscle faster and burn more calories over time. Ready to start getting fit? Here are some compound exercises you can add into your workout routine:
Squats are a great exercise for building your legs, butt, and abs. They’re also the most basic compound exercise you can do. If you want to build muscle mass and strength, squats should be at the top of your list of exercises—and there are lots of different squat variations to choose from!
The squat is performed by bending down with your back straight and lowering yourself until your thighs are parallel with the floor or lower, then standing back up again. There are several different types of squats.
The deadlift is a compound exercise that works several muscles in your body. It targets your core, legs, back and grip strength. The deadlift is one of the best full-body workouts you can do to build muscle mass and burn fat.
The deadlift also helps with other exercises such as squats, lunges and rows. If you want to improve your performance on these types of exercises then adding in some heavy deadlifts will help build up those muscles needed to get better results from those exercises.
If you are new to weightlifting or have never done any kind of workout before then I would suggest starting with lighter weights until you get used to how it feels when using heavier weights in order not hurt yourself by doing too much too soon!
- Start with a barbell in the rack at shoulder height.
- Unrack into the front rack position
- Lift the barbell up above your head, keeping it at arms’ length and using only your shoulders to lift it. This is also called a shoulder press or military press.
Pull-ups are a great exercise to include in your workout routine. They can be done using a chair or tree branch, and they work the back, biceps, lats and abs.
You can also modify them to make them easier if you are just starting out on pull-ups or you have a specific injury that prevents you from doing the full movement of pulling yourself up with your arms. In general, the more challenging version is better because it will build more muscle mass throughout the upper body area by increasing strength in those muscles over time.
A good way to start developing some basic fitness levels before tackling this challenge is by doing inverted rows on an incline bench at home or at the gym; this will help strengthen core stability as well as arm strength for pull-ups later down the line.
Read More: How to Do HIIT Cardio to Get to 10 Percent Body Fat
Image Sources
- Sled Push: Reebok
- Mountain Climbers: Li Sun on Pexels