The 3-Minute Shredded Arms And Abs Workout
This workout torches fat, shreds your core, and sculpts your chest, arms, and shoulders—all in three minutes. Get ready for latest installment in Yahoo Health’s original workout series, Triple Threat. (Photo by Will Mebane, graphic by Priscilla DeCastro/Yahoo Health)
The burpee: It’s an exercise fitness experts love, and pretty much everyone else loves to hate. But everybody can agree on this: Burpees are one of the best all-around exercises you can do.
If you’re not familiar with the exercise, it’s basically a squat thrust with a jump. The basic movement: Leap up and reach your arms to the sky. As you land, squat down low and place your palms on the floor. Hop your feet out into a plank (the top position of a pushup). Then reverse it: Hop back, stand, jump, repeat.
“The burpee is an intense full-body exercise that burns more calories than most other exercise options out there,” says fitness expert and celebrity trainer Craig Ramsay. “With every rep, you’ll work your arms and abs and get your heart rate up immediately.”
If the basic burpee is like a classic Swiss Army knife, then the variations Ramsay developed for this workout are like those 50-arm Swiss Army knives that come with a ruler, fish scaler, and built-in GPS. That is, they’re even more awesome than the original.
In this Shredded Arms And Abs Workout, created exclusively for Yahoo Health, Ramsay incorporates rows, curls, pushups, and shoulder presses into the burpee movement. The different variations ensure that you hit all of the major muscles in your arms, shoulders, and chest in addition to the burpee’s cardio and core benefits.
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Ramsay deliberately selected the arm exercises in this routine to work the biceps and triceps equally. “Guys sometimes focus too much on the biceps, ignoring the triceps,” he tells Yahoo Health. “They don’t realize the greatest potential for impressive arm size comes from developing their triceps.”
And although you might not feel an immediate burn in your abs, like you might while holding a plank or cranking out crunches, make no mistake: this workout will annihilate every inch of your core. “The flow movement of the burpee will make it mandatory for your core to work overtime,” Ramsay says. “With the consistent plank position in every rep—in combination with the movement into and out of the plank—your core will have no rest. This constant contracted support from your stabilizing muscles will help build your overall endurance and strength, and develop your conditioning.”
The best part: This entire workout takes only three minutes—and will still leave you dripping with sweat.
The Shredded Arms and Abs Workout
How to do this workout: Perform one minute of each exercise, one after the other, without rest. (It’s OK to take short, five-second breaks as needed to catch your breath.) Do the workout six days a week, Ramsay recommends. Count your reps each workout, he adds, and make it a personal challenge to see how many burpees you can complete.
1) Burpee with pushup and row
This exercise combines a pushup, row, and plank to fire up your triceps, abs, and chest. (Photos by Will Mebane)
Start standing with a dumbbell in each hand. Bend your hips and knees and squat down until the dumbbells touch the floor. Keep your arms straight. Thrust your feet behind you, landing with your toes wider than your shoulders. Form a straight line with your body from your head to your toes. Without moving your hips, row one dumbbell up to your side. Lower it, then row the other dumbbell. Hop your feet back in, and stand up. That’s one rep. Repeat the exercise continuously with minimal rest.
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2) Bicep-blasting burpee
Build bigger biceps and shoulders while burning fat with this intense full-body exercise.
Stand with your feet-shoulder width apart. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your sides with your palms facing each other. Curl the weights to shoulder height; as you curl, rotate the dumbbells so that your palms face up. Press the dumbbells straight overhead; as you do, rotate your grip so that your palms face forward. Lower the weights down to your thighs. Bend your hips and knees to lower your body down until the dumbbells rest on the floor. Keeping your arms straight, hop your feet out behind you. Land on your toes with your body forming a straight line from head to toe. Hop forward and land with your feet between the dumbbells. Stand up. Without resting, repeat the entire movement.
3) Hopping inchworm plank
This challenging core move doubles as a demanding cardio exercise.
Start on all fours with your arms straight and your hands underneath your shoulders (plank position). Explosively hop your feet forward, landing with your feet underneath your body. Take three smaller, even hops with your feet backward to return to the plank position. Tip: Holding two heavy dumbbells, as shown, will help give you leverage.
Make it harder: When you reach the plank position, perform a full pushup.
Make it even harder: From the squat position (feet near dumbbells), let go of the dumbbells and jump up as high as you can.
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