The Quick Calisthenics Workout You Can Do Anywhere

Try this quick bodyweight-only calisthenics workout that requires no equipment, and combines strength and cardio.

MALLORY CREVELING, LIFE BY DAILY BURN

December 19, 2017

This article originally appeared on DailyBurn.com.

The easiest way to squash excuses for skipping a workout? Find a routine that requires zero equipment, knocks out two training techniques in one (aka strength and cardio), and perhaps most importantly, makes sweating it out seriously fun. Check off all three with this quick bodyweight-only calisthenics workout, featuring moves from Daily Burn’s DB10 program. By moving up, down and side-to-side you’ll work your body in new, exciting ways. Plus, you’ll keep your mind focused, your muscles working efficiently and your heart rate revved. All you have to do is channel the energy of a school kid at recess. Then jump right in to a workout you’ll want to keep repeating.

RELATED: Got 10 Minutes? 3 Fat-Blasting Bodyweight Workouts

Your Fast, Calorie-Blasting Calisthenics Workout

Get on your feet — it’s time for some fitness-boosting fun. These six exercises will put your speed, strength and coordination to the test. Perform each move for 30 to 45 seconds each, resting for a max 30 seconds between moves. At the end of the circuit, rest for 30 to 60 seconds and repeat for as many rounds as possible.

GIFs: Daily Burn DB10

1. Quick Feet 180 Jump

How to: Stand with feet a little wider than hip width apart and start quickly stepping your feet (a). After about three seconds, push your hips back and drop your butt down for a squat. Touch the floor with your hand when you reach the bottom (b). As you explode up for a jump, do a 180-degree turn in the air (c). Land softly back on your feet, knees bent and lower into another squat, touching the floor with your opposite hand (d). Explode back up, performing another 180-degree jump back to the front (e). Land softly and immediately start buzzing your feet again (f). Repeat.

RELATED: Burn Calories Fast with This 10-Minute Plyometrics Workout

2. Push-Up Punch

How to: Start in an extended arm plank position, with feet a little wider than your hips to broaden your base of support (a). Perform one push-up (b). When you reach the top, punch your left arm straight out in front of you, bicep by your ear (c). Place your hand back down and perform another push-up (d). Then perform the punch with your right arm (e). Continue alternating punches, with one push-up between each punch.

3. Lunge Switch

How to: Start standing. Step your right foot forward and bend both knees to 90 degrees to perform a lunge (a). Push off your right front foot, bring your knee up toward your chest and then step it back behind you. Drop down to perform a reverse lunge (b). Then, push off your feet to explode up in the air, switching your stance and landing back down in a lunge with your right foot forward (c). Step your left foot up, in front of your right, to perform a forward lunge (d). Repeat the reverse lunge and plyo lunge on the opposite site (e). Continue alternating lunges, doing one forward, then backward and then a plyo.

RELATED: 6 Plyometric Exercises for a No-Running Cardio Workout

4. Plank-Up Diagonal Hop

How to: Start in an extended arm plank position (a). Bend your right elbow to place your forearm on the mat, then your left to hit a forearm plank (b). Next, straighten your right elbow and then your left to get back into a high plank (c). Jump both feet to the outside of your right hand, then back to plank position (d). Jump both feet to the outside of your left hand, then back to plank position (e). Repeat the high-low plank, then the diagonal hops.

5. Burpee Skater

How to: Start standing with feet about hip-width apart (a). Perform one burpee by placing your hands on the ground and jumping your feet back to a plank. Then, quickly jump them back up to your hands and explode up at the top to perform another hop (b). Next, hop your left foot out to the side and bring your right foot behind your left leg (c). Push of your left foot and hop to the right side, bringing your left foot behind your right leg (d). Perform another skater to each side, then repeat the burpee (e). Continue alternating between one burpee and two skaters.

RELATED: 7 New Burpee Variations to Test Your Strength

6. Rolling Squat Jump

How to: Start standing with feet about hip-width apart (a). Drop down into a squat all the way to the ground so your butt touches the mat (b). Place your hands straight down by your sides and roll on your back so your feet come overhead (c). Roll back up coming up to a squat and jump up at the top (d). Repeat the roll and squat jump.

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The mother-daughter duo crushed this core exercise that targets the obliques.

ROZALYNN S. FRAZIER 

December 19, 2017

Looking for a workout buddy? You may want to consider your mom. At least that’s what model Ashley Graham did: The 30-year-old—who regularly shares her killer fitness routines on social media—headed to Dogpound in NYC this past weekend for what she captioned a “Mommy Daughter Workout” in an Instagram Story.

Watching the video clips of Graham and her equally fit mom, Linda, sweat it out side by side gave us ALL the feels. It also gave our abs ALL the quivers, especially when they tackled this core crusher.

Ashley Graham

The move: Plank Knee Twist on a Bosu Ball

Why it’s good: It works your entire core, with a focus on the obliques. Plus the Bosu ball challenges your stability.

How to do it: Get into a plank with hands on the sides of a Bosu ball. With abs tight, rotate waist and bring left knee in and across body towards right triceps. Straighten right leg back out to plank, and then bring right knee in and across body towards left triceps. Return left leg back out to plank. Continue alternating legs as fast as possible.

Try it out with your mom—or any gym buddy—to take both your ab routine (hello COREgeous!) and your relationship to the next level.

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Carrie Underwood’s Go-To Exercise for Killer LegsMut

Jess Levinson

Start with feet hip-width apart. Step right foot forward and lower down into a lunge until both legs form 90-degree angles; begin pulsing, up 2 inches, down 2 inches (A). Keeping abs tight and spine aligned, shift weight and torso forward; continue pulsing (B). Return to A and shift weight and torso back (C); continue pulsing. Try each position for 20 seconds; rest and repeat on the opposite leg.

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This Is the Best Workout for Women

When it comes to exercise, the aerobic kind steals all the glory. All of the fun ways to sweat can help you get the government-recommended 150 minutes of aerobic activity each week, like swimming, volleyball, brisk walking—anything that speeds up your blood flow and breath.

Less appealing is the other, more neglected kind: strength-training. While about half of Americans meet the goals for aerobic exercise, only 20% do the recommended muscle-strengthening activities that work major muscle groups. Women, especially, tend to shy away from it.

But they neglect it at their own peril. Strength-training significantly lowers the risk for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, finds a new study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

Scientists (and anyone else who’s ever pumped some iron) have long known that strength training makes muscles bigger. It also protects bones by increasing their density, an important perk for aging women. But more recent evidence shows that it also reduces BMI, which improves how the body uses insulin. A bigger muscle also means that glucose can get around the body better.

The researchers wanted to see if the lesser-known benefits of strength training, like these, actually influence a person’s risk of type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

RELATED: 57 Ways to Lose Weight Forever, According to Science

Using data from the Women’s Health Study, they followed nearly 36,000 older women who ranged in age from 47-98. The women filled out questionnaires yearly from 2000-2014 about their health and exercise levels, and one question asked women to estimate how much weight lifting/strength training they’d done per week in the past year. The researchers tracked which of the women got cardiovascular disease—including events like heart attack and stroke—and type-2 diabetes.

Whether a woman did these muscle-strengthening exercises or not predicted much about her health. “Women who reported participating in any amount of strength training were more likely to have a lower BMI, more likely to engage in healthy dietary patterns, and less likely to be a current smoker,” compared with women who avoided it, the authors write.

Strength training was also linked to a woman’s risk for the two conditions. Those who said they did any amount of strength training had a type-2 diabetes risk 30% lower and a cardiovascular disease risk 17% lower than those who did none, even after the researchers controlled for other variables like age, vegetable and fruit intake and physical activity.

Not surprisingly, adding in aerobic exercise helped drive both risks down even more. Those who did at least 120 minutes a week of aerobic exercise and some strength training had a type-2 diabetes risk 65% lower than women who didn’t do either.

More research is needed to determine the optimum amount of strength training for women and men to reduce their risks. But the study suggests that both kinds of exercise impart unique benefits—and that strength training has some serious scientific weight to it.

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