A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the push up is one of the best abs exercises. I hope everyone enjoyed the video I made of 17 different styles of push ups, because I decided to make another one!
These push ups are a little different in that most of them need equipment. The last video showed you only push ups that didn’t require any equipment. I filmed a few more like that, but the rest make use of dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, a stability ball, a swing set, and another person!
Yep you heard right, you’ll have to watch the entire video to see the famous Advanced Partner Push Up at the very end. These were a blast to try out. Anyway I think I came up with 33 more push up variations!
After doing these, I know the push up is one of the best abs exercises. My abs were rocked for 2 days straight after filming this along with my chest and triceps.
We make great use of the push up in the Four Minute Workout DVDs as we show you a few variations. But now, I’ve showed you 50 different push up variations! You can make up an endless number of your own 4-minute workouts.
Check out the video of all these push ups. Let me know what you think? Can you guess which one was the hardest for me to do? Which ones will you try? Please leave your comments in the link that says Comment.
There has been more and more research coming out that show that to lose fat, get a flat stomach and 6-pack abs, your workouts can be very short. But how short can you really make your workouts? 15 minutes? 10 minutes? How about in as little as 4 minutes?
You may have heard of a type of interval training called Tabata intervals. The length of a Tabata interval is exactly 4 minutes. Can you imagine if all you had to do was a 4 minute circuit every day, and you would blowtorch that excess body fat and get a flat stomach?
The question I receive the most often about this topic is: ‘How effective can a workout be with just 4 minutes of exercise?’
The answer is simple: VERY effective.
The name Tabata Interval comes from a research study conducted by Dr. Izumi Tabata and his research colleagues. The study was published in the journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Tabata Intervals consist of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest.
The cycle is repeated 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes.
An intense workout such as this has the advantage of taxing both your anaerobic and aerobic energy systems. After only 6 weeks of training like this, Dr. Tabata noticed a 28% increase in the anaeorbic capacity in the athletes that he studied.
Tabata intervals are also very effective for fat loss. This type of interval training will
raise your metabolic rate for several hours after the workout session is completed.
You will continue to burn fat several hours throughout the day. Many other studies confirm that this powerful ‘after-burn’ that you experience because of interval training is a lot more effective for fat loss than low intensity, continuous exercise.
Now I can’t confirm that you can get a flat stomach and 6-pack abs by just working out 4 minutes a day (along with a proper diet, of course). But in my recent transformation, there were several days where I strung together 3 or 4 of these 4-minute intervals for a 12 to 16 minute workout. These proved to be very effective and time efficient.
Here is an example of a workout for you. It only involves one exercise. You would do this exercise for 20 seconds as fast as you can. Then you would rest for 10 seconds. Repeat this for a total of 8 rounds which equals 4 minutes.
The exercise is a squat thrust, push up, jumping lunge combination. It will work your abs, your chest, shoulders and arms, along with your legs and sky-rocket your heart rate. When I really push it, I can get about 4 to 4 1/2 repetitions of this exercise in 20 seconds.
See the video below for the technique and then enjoy trying it. : )
