If you want to burn more fat while doing your regular workouts, this little trick will get the job done.
There are times when your workout just needs a little… extra. Maybe you like your workout routine, but you’ve hit a plateau and need to ramp up the intensity. Or you are currently trying to lose weight and need a little help. Maybe you finished your workout and you still feel like you have some left in the tank. You might be halfway through and you find it isn’t challenging or satisfying enough.
Welcome to hell.
Welcome to my hell, that is. My 4 Minutes of Hell, or 4MOH for short. This lil’ nugget of intense goodness will take a workout fat burn factor from a five to a eight, nine or ten.
Why would I want added intensity in my workout?
There are loads of benefits to adding intensity to your workout, and you don’t need the entire workout to be High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). By adding even just one, maybe two, intensity sections into your workout, you can get most of the same benefits without changing up your entire routine.
Also, HIIT isn’t sustainable or healthy to do for the entire workout every day. But with 4MOH, you can pepper the intensity throughout the entire week, getting delicious spurts of intensity goodness without sacrificing your nervous system.
HIIT feels good, even in small doses. It feels like you accomplished something difficult, which is always fulfilling, and it releases some good-feeling brain-drug endorphins. If you’re like me, you might even be a little (ahem) addicted to this feeling. Or to the feeling of burning goodness in your muscles.
Not every workout needs to feel really hard for it to be effective, but there are times that you want that or need that fix, and the workout isn’t delivering.
That’s when you call in your little friend. Your little friend 4MOH. And she will. Kick. Your. Ass.
How the 4MOH works.
It’s simple. Get your interval timer (there are plenty of free apps online or on your phone, or pick up a Gymboss) and set it for 10 rounds of 2 intervals: 12 seconds and 12 seconds. This totals four minutes (hence, “4 Minutes of Hell”).
I do 12 seconds of “rest” and 12 seconds of “work,” because that’s how my interval timer works. But it doesn’t matter what it’s registered as, as long as it’s 12 seconds and 12 seconds for 10 total rounds.
There is no rest.
You’re going to go back and forth between two exercises for the entire four minutes. (This is one way to format a bodyweight superset, by the way.)
What exercises do you do in the 4MOH?
That’s up to you, but I’ll give you some guidance. Generally—and there are exceptions to this—you want your exercises to be:
- Quick.
- Bodyweight.
- Intense.
Quick.
12 seconds is a very short interval, and you’ll invariably lose a few seconds adjusting from one exercise to the next, so you want something quick. One rep of whatever exercise you do should be two seconds or less. One second is even better. Longer than that means you won’t get enough reps in for 12 seconds. Or, you start counting half reps, and that’s just silly.
Bodyweight.
Bodyweight is best because you don’t have extra time to bend over and pick up a weight. By the time you do, the interval is almost over. Also, the 4MOH isn’t a structure that’s best for strength or size gains in itself. It will either get you a great cardiovascular spurt, or it will fatigue your muscles for later reps in your workout. It’s not the time to work on your overhead presses or heavily weighted squats. The more weight you add, the more form matters, and 12 seconds isn’t long enough for you to execute good form for enough reps.
Intense.
The main goal is to get your body to burn more fat. The 4MOH isn’t doing all the work on its own; it’s a catalyst that enables the entire workout to get you to into that fat-burning zone. And it will continue to burn fat after the workout is over.
This is why the entire 4MOH needs to be intense. What does that mean? Well, it’s different for everybody, so you’ll have to be your own guinea pig. Because the intervals are short, it’s likely that the first few rounds will flow pretty well. About halfway through, however, you should feel fatigued. And by the end, you should be struggling with at least one of the exercises.
The 4 Minutes of Hell is called so for a reason. What you lack in time you add in intensity. And remember, it’s only four minutes long, broken into periods of 12 seconds. In the words of Kimmy Schmidt, “Anything is bearable for 10 seconds!” (And we’ll pretend she says “twelve” there.)
The good thing is that with such quick intervals and only two exercises, most things get tiring. Even if an exercise is easy for you, it might not be in the pairing you made.
Exceptions.
There are exceptions to the above rules. Exercises don’t need to be quick if they hold tension the entire time, like with an isometric or a very slow exercise. You can use weights for 4MOH, but if you do, use the weight for both exercises. You don’t want to waste time putting weights down and picking them up. For instance, you could do weighted squats and weighted deadlifts, as long as you’re holding the same weight. Overhead presses and bent over rows could work, too, as long as you’re experienced with the movement.
The same rule goes for any equipment. Pull-ups are generally bad for this structure, but you could do (as I have done) pull-ups and isometric pull-ups together. That way, you’re not wasting time coming down from or jumping up to the bar. (However, this combo is suuuuper hard!)
The exception to the “intense” rule is that both exercises need not be intense on their own as long as they are together. I’ll talk more about pairings in a moment, but you can pair one exercise that is very intense, like jump lunges, with a less intense one that works the same body part, like isometric squats or bodyweight squats. Mountain climbers aren’t intense for 12 seconds, but they can be when they’re paired with push-ups.
Here are some great exercises for the 4MOH:
- Mountain climbers.
- Jump lunges.
- Jump squats.
- Box jumps.
- Push-ups (and any variation that’s quick).
- Side jump lunges.
- Sprawls.
- V-ups.
- Frog kicks.
- Pendulums.
- Shoulder presses (pike presses).
- Donkey kicks.
- Plank up-downs.
- Isometric one leg squats.
- Isometric deadlifts.
- Isometric squats or squat pulses.
- Star jumps.
- Isometric lunges or lunge pulses.
- Back lunge and jump up.
- Side lunge and jump up.
- Tricep kickbacks.
- Isometric low reptiles.
- Plank jumps.
Just for fun, here are some examples of bad choices for 4MOH:
- Pull-ups. (Unless you’re able to stay on the bar and do both intervals on it, like hanging leg lifts and pull-ups, or isometric pull-up and pull-ups. Problem is, that requires a lot of strength and stamina.)
- Burpees. (One rep is too long for just 12 seconds.)
- Dive bombers. (Too long.)
- Thrusters. (Too long, and grabbing weights will waste another couple of precious seconds.)
- Turkish get-ups. (Too long, and it takes a lot of time to get into position.)
How to pair the exercises.
For the pairing, you want to make sure that they do one of the following:
- Work different muscle groups entirely.
- Work different sides of the body on the same muscle group.
- Work the same muscle group in different intensities.
- Work the same muscle group from different angles.
Work different muscle groups.
This is straightforward. Most of the exercises appropriate for 4MOH are not isolated muscle groups, so generally either upper body and lower body, upper body, and core, or lower body and core work best. If you’re holding weights, it could be more localized, like shoulders and lats, or hamstrings and quads.
What you do not want to do are two exercises too similar, both in location and intensity, like jump lunges and squat jumps. If you do, you’ll end up taxing the muscles and joints to the point where you’re unable to do any reps at all. You’ll also open up the possibility of injury.
Same muscle group, different sides of the body.
Great examples would be back lunge pulses, back lunge and jump up, or single-arm kettlebell press (it shouldn’t be hard to switch the kettlebell each interval). These are harder to do with upper body than it is with the lower body.
Same muscle group, different intensities.
Isometric exercises work beautifully here. You could do isometric squat with jump squats. You’d be surprised how those isometric squats get tiring. A simple plank could work well with push-ups. I’ve mentioned isometric pull-ups with regular pull-ups, which works well, but only if you are very advanced.
Work the same muscle group from different angles.
If you do this, make sure that the combination doesn’t get so intense that you can’t do any reps. This works best with two light to moderate exercises. One of my favorite combos is an isometric one leg squat with an isometric bodyweight deadlift, what I call a “dancer deadlift.” Hold your body in a T formation, with your arms, back, and other leg forming a straight line, as horizontal as possible. The standing leg should be straight, but not locked. Then, you switch sides of the body halfway through.
Also, be sure that whatever exercise combination you do, it doesn’t take much time to go from one to the other.
Here are some of my favorite combos for the 4MOH:
- Reptile push-ups and jump lunges.
- Jump lunges and mountain climbers.
- Lunge pulses L and lunge pulses R (do a jump lunge to switch legs).
- Isometric squat and jump squat.
- Isometric one leg squat and isometric dancer deadlift (switch legs halfway).
- Tiger push-ups and tricep kick-backs.
When do you do the 4MOH?
You can do the 4MOH whenever you want. It’s like a little explosive, fat-burning, intensity treat. You could place it in the middle of a longer workout, or you could tack it on to the beginning or end.
The good news is that it affects any exercises you do after it. So, if your workout is a little too easy, you can take a break and do a 4MOH before continuing, making the rest of the workout much more difficult and ramping up the fat burn.
You could do it at the end of your workout if you have a little extra in you once you’re done. Or, if you have a lot of energy and want to expend a lot at the top of your workout, you could do that before jumping in to the main course. I’ve also done it as a mini workout on its own.
Alternatives to the 4MOH.
If you’re a beginner, you probably want to put this aside and do a Tabata instead, which is 10 seconds of rest followed by 20 seconds of work for 8 rounds. This gives you a little bit of rest between exercises to get situated. While it’s not as intense as the 12&12×10 structure, that’s a good thing if you’re just starting out.
And being a beginner, your body is going to burn hella amounts of fat anyway, so you don’t need to worry about this next step just yet.
You can play around with other formats, also. I’ve done 15&15×6 for a slightly less harrowing experience since it’s a whole 3 seconds longer per interval and one whole minute less overall.
If you’re doing cardio, like running, walking, biking or the elliptical machine, you can add bursts of intensity here and there with 30 seconds or 60 seconds of maximum effort. One of my favorites is to do a 10-minute run with 30 seconds of running and 30 seconds of jogging the whole time.
The bottom line? Intensity is your friend, even if she kicks your ass. And she’ll show you how to burn that extra fat off in no time.