Hard work and the right exercise strategy are the keys to getting the bikini body you’ve always wanted. Dedicate six weeks of your life to get bikini-ready using a combination of weight training and high-intensity interval training. This combination will help tighten and tone your body by burning fat and improving your body composition.
The Gist of It
The nuts and bolts of this workout includes working out five days per week, leaving two days to rest and recover. Each exercise session lasts 30 to 40 minutes. Because each session is done at a high intensity level, it’s important to keep your workouts relatively short and to the point to avoid over-working your body. Access to weight-training equipment is ideal but not required. A set of dumbbells can do the trick for your weight-training sessions.
Week One: Ease Into It
The first week is all about easing your body into the workout by shortening the duration of each session to just 15 minutes. Do an HIIT workout on Monday. If you’re new to HIIT, it involves alternating short, vigorous bursts of aerobic exercise followed by short recovery intervals. You can use any aerobic exercise you wish -- running, walking briskly, treadmill, elliptical, cycling and swimming. After warming up for a few minutes, do a 30-second interval at nearly all-out effort. Follow this with a 60-second recovery interval done a light-to-moderate pace. Repeat this pattern 10 times to complete your 15-minute workout. Do the same workout on Wednesday and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday, perform a basic resistance-training workout doing the following exercises in this order: body-weight squats, pushups, crunches, calf raises on a step and supermans. Do one set of each exercise, and do as many repetitions as it takes to reach muscle failure. Rest 90 seconds between each set.
Week Two: Ramping Up Effort
Do the same workout routine you did in the first week, but increase the workout duration to 20 minutes per session. Do so by doing 13 intervals instead of 10 during each HIIT workout, and do two sets instead of one for each resistance-training workout. If possible, use a different type of cardio exercise for your HIIT workout, such as doing cycling instead of running. The same is true for each subsequent week; variety is a good thing when it comes to exercising.
Week Three: Boost Your Effort
Again, follow the same workout schedule, but increase the workout time by additional five minutes. Do 17 intervals for each HIIT workout and three sets of exercise when doing your body-weight resistance training workouts.
Week Four: Adding Equipment
It’s time to really ramp up the intensity. Each daily workout will now last 30 minutes. Do 20 intervals for each HIIT workout. Instead of doing body-weight resistance exercises on Tuesday and Thursday, add some additional resistance using weight machines or dumbbells. An effective full-body dumbbell workout would include dumbbell lunges, dumbbell calf raises, shoulder presses, weighted crunches, bicep curls, tricep extensions and bent-over dumbbell reverse flyes. Do two sets of each exercise -- 12 to 15 repetitions for the first set, and go until you can’t do another rep for the second set.
Week Five: Aim for Vigorous
Perform the same routine as the fourth week with one minor exception: Increase the intensity of each session to burn more calories and challenge your muscles harder. Do so by adding five seconds to each vigorous interval during your HIIT workout sessions and adding resistance to each weight-training exercise. You can add as little as 1 pound to your current resistance level for each exercise or up to 5 pounds if you’d really like to challenge yourself.
Week Six: Wrap It Up
Complete your final week of the workout strong by increasing the duration of each workout to about 35 minutes. For each HIIT workout, you’ll now be doing a total of 22 interval cycles -- 35 seconds for each vigorous interval and 60 seconds for each recovery interval. Do the same weight-training routine but add a third set to each exercise. By the end of the sixth week, enjoy your new slim and trim bikini body.
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