Vionna Jones: Hi! I'm Vionna Jones with FitinDC, LLC. I'm showing you how to burn calories during the holidays. Right now, I'm going to show you the calorie burning workout circuit. The workout circuit is made up of five exercises. We'll start with squats either body weight squat or push press, and then we'll move on to upright rows, non-climbers, pushups, and pass the ball. The exercises are going to be set up in a circuit. Each exercise is going to be one station within the circuit and you'll spend one minute at each station.

So, you'll start your clock, and then it run continuously throughout the circuit, not taking any breaks in between each exercise. Once, one minute is up you'll able to go on and start your next minute at the next exercise. After you've completed all five exercises in the circuit you'll take a one minute break. At the end of that one minute break, you'll go through the circuit again completing the circuit at a total of three times. This should take you about 18 minutes and you want to pay attention to your pace, throughout the circuit. You don't want to move too fast because you want to be able to complete an entire minute without taking any breaks and without taking breaks in between each station. However, if you're moving too fast and you feel like your body needs a break, take a quick break, and then we'll get started again. Alright, let's begin the workout.

So, our first station in our circuit is going to be squat. And we have a couple of level of squats that you can choose from depending upon your fitness level. The first level would be to do body weight squats, which means we're not going to use any weight and we're just going to do the squat. So you want to start with your feet a little bit wider than your hips. And with the body weight squats, we just hold our hands out to the side in front of you or in front of you this way and you'll squat down engaging your abs, lifting your toes just a little bit so you can sink back into your heels. You're going to squat down keeping your chest lifted so you want to look straight ahead, and then pushup through your heels, squeezing your gluteus come back up. And then you squat down and back up. You're keeping the shoulder blades rolled back, so that your chest stays lifted. This exercise is working your gluteus and your quads, which is the front of your thighs right here. So you can hold your arms here, you could also you arms here, as long as your chest is staying lifted. Level two is to do a Push Press.

So, for a push press you're going to do the same squat, except you're going to hold weight starting at your shoulder height here. And you can use, depending on the strength of your shoulders, you can use eight pound weights or five pound weights to start, and you're going to do the same thing. You'll squat down, push-up through your heels, this time on your way up you push the weights up, bring the weights back down and squat back down.

So again, you're starting with engaging your abdominal muscles, rolling your shoulders back and pushing up strong through your shoulders on the way up. Doing as many as you can in one minute going at a good pace, so that you don't have to take a break before the minute is up. At the end of the minute, we'll go straight into upright rows. So, for upright rows, you can use a little bit of a heavier weight for this. This exercise is going to work your upper back muscles. So, you can use a ten pound weight, a twelve pound weight, an eight pound weight.

So with the weight down in front of you, as you lift up, you're going to bring the weight up toward your chin, elbows come up, rolling the shoulders back and engaging your back muscles, and then lower back down. Lifting up, squeezing in your back muscles, and then lowering back down. You want to make sure that your elbows don't stay down here; your elbows are up high, coming right up underneath your chin and engaging your back muscles here. If you would like to add a little bit more to your upright row, you can add a squat. So if your legs aren't too tired you squat down, chest is lifted, shoulders rolled back, bring the elbows up and squeeze between the shoulder blades, and then lower back down.

Again, we'll go at a good constant pace, so that we don't have to take any breaks before our minute is up. So, at the end of this minute, we're going to do some cardio, we'll do mountain climbers or mountain climber jacks. You start on the floor in a plank position, bringing one knee up to your chest, and then the other, alternating for one minute, keeping your hips in line with your shoulders, looking straight ahead. So add some more cardio to this level two, you'll do three of these, one, two, three, come up, do a jumping jack, come back down. One, two, three, for one minute, and then we'll move on to pushups. No breaks.

So, for pushups there are several different options for whatever your fitness level is. Option one, will be to do pushups on your knees. With your hands a little bit wider than your shoulders, your body is in a line, you'll bend your elbows, bringing your chest down as close to the floor as you can, looking straight ahead, and then come back up, abs are engaged. Option two is to straighten out the legs, keeping the body flat, abs engaged, performing a pushup here. There are other various options, in between you can bring your hands to a table, if doing them on your knees, it's too easy or if doing them on your toes is too hard or if it bothers your wrist, you could hold on to your free weights or perform the pushups with your hands against the wall.

The fifth and final exercise in your circuit is to pass the ball. For this one you'll need a stability ball, which you can buy at any sporting goods store, and a mat. So you'll start lying on your mat, your arms and the ball extended up behind you, your legs extending out in front of you. You'll lift, lifting your shoulders and your head and the ball off the floor, pass the ball to your knees, lower down, but don't touch the floor, come back up, pass the ball to your hands and lower back down. We'll do this continuously for one minute.

Level two, when you pass the ball to your legs, this time you'll pass the ball to your feet instead of your knees, keeping your legs straight, lower back down and come up, lower down without touching the floor, continuously for one minute. After this you'll take your one minute break and go through the circuit again. These are the five exercises for your holiday calorie burning workout. Next, we'll talk about stretching.