Advertisement

Consider This 15-Minute Dumbbell HIIT Workout Your Quick-fire Lunch-Break Energiser

Flagging? Distracted? Or perhaps you’re just struggling to get motivated. Making time to transform your health and tick off performance goals can be hard enough without squeezing it into the one hour you’re supposed to be email-free. So, it can be easy to forget one crucial fact: breaking a sweat is meant to be fun. Faisal Abdalla – aka Mr Positive Mental Attitude, and one of our Elite coaches for the MH Squad – is here to jog your memory.

The London-based fitness instructor, author and personal trainer to celebrities and Olympians is known for his highly infectious enthusiasm and firm belief that developing a good attitude is half of the battle. ‘As soon as I started to reap the physical and psychological rewards of training, I was hooked,’ he says. Now he wants to reel in others, too.

HIIT is Abdalla’s speciality – short, sharp, high-energy, high-enjoyment workouts that you can do from home, the gym, the park or anywhere else you lay your rubber dumbbells. The workout he presents here is ideal for your WFH lunch break or any time when you might find yourself in need of a mental lift, stat.

‘This bad boy only lasts 16 minutes,’ says Abdalla, but it’s designed to send your heart rate into the red zone, maximising calorie burn and elevating metabolism, while delivering a natural hormonal high. Grab a set of dumbbells and, as Abdalla puts it, ‘Get it, son!’


15 Minutes of Breathtaking Fun

‘We have four exercises that we’re going to repeat for four rounds,’ says Abdalla. For each move, you’ll work for 40 secs and rest for 20 secs. ‘Just make sure you’re putting in honest effort or you won’t get honest results.’ Get your playlist ready.

01/ Dumbbell Prisoner Squat

Place feet shoulder-width apart, dumbbells at your side. Put your arms behind your head (A). Keep your torso upright, then push your hips back and lower into a squat (B). Pause at the bottom, then push up through your heels, extend through your hips and explosively stand back up.

02/ Dumbbell High Pull

This one targets your whole body. With your feet shoulder-width apart, push your hips back and slightly bend your knees, letting the dumbbells hang just below knee height (A). In one movement, stand up by thrusting your hips forward and pulling the bells up to your shoulders (B). Reverse and repeat.

03/ Dumbbell Devil Press

Out of breath? If not, you soon will be. Holding the dumbbells, hinge your hips and lower your arms to the ground. Kick your feet back into a plank (A). Complete a press-up and pop up on to your feet, swinging the weights from between your legs up to overhead (B). Keep the momentum going into your next rep.

04/ Burpee Over Dumbbell

Now the killer. Place the dumbbells to one side, reach your hands down to the floor and kick back into a plank. Drop your chest to the floor (A), then push up to standing before jumping to the side over the weights (B). Keep repping out burpees, jumping side to side. Enjoy your rest.

You Might Also Like