Great Outdoor Workouts in 20 Minutes or Less
by Mike Geary author of the best-selling Truth About Abs

I've got just a quick tip today to help get you started on your summer beach body. With summer right around the corner here in the US, the weather is starting to warm up and people are flocking outside after being cooped up all winter.

Now that it's getting nice outside, why not take some of your workouts outdoors, instead of the stuffy old gym? Your workouts also don't have to be long drawn-out 2-hour events in order to get a great metabolism boosting, muscle sculpting workout.

Here's an idea for an outdoor workout that literally takes me 10-20 minutes, but has me drenched in sweat and pumped up by the end...

There's a little playground and a softball field at the end of my road. So on a nice day, if I decide I just want to get a real quick outdoor workout in, I run over to the field, spend a couple minutes limbering up, and then... depending on how I feel, do about 10-20 minutes of the following exercises with almost no rest in between:

-50, 75, or 100-yard wind sprints

-hill sprints (if you have a hill nearby)

-pushup variations

-walking lunge variations

-bodyweight squat variations

-box jump, squat jump, or lunge jump variations

-pullups on the playground monkey bars

-mountain climbers on ground

Sometimes I'll rotate through all of these exercises and sometimes I'll just pick a couple of them and just keep alternating. Whatever I choose, I keep the rest periods very short (10-30 seconds at most) so that the intensity stays as high as possible. This really maximizes the fat burning hormonal response and metabolism boosting response you get from these workouts, given the brief duration of the workout.

Believe me, if you do this at a high speed clip, you'll get a killer workout in as little as 10-20 minutes, and then you can get back home and get on with your life.

Even if you're not in super shape right now, you can just take it at a little lower intensity to ease yourself into it. It's worth it! Working out in the outdoors and breathing in the fresh air definitely has a stimulating effect, and some studies I've seen have indicated that you possibly burn more calories exercising outdoors compared to indoors. So give it a try!

More Articles By Mike Geary

Return to the Workout Articles Archive