Interval Workouts

Running not only burns calories, but it also does wonders for strengthening and sculpting your entire lower body. If you want to tone your legs and butt even more, give this calorie-torching workout a go. You can do our sculpting interval workout on a treadmill or outside; just increase the incline on the machine or find an actual hill on your outdoor route for the steeper intervals.

This 53-minute workout, including a warmup and a cooldown, is full of walking lunges, high-knee running, sprints, walking uphill, and running sideways to target different muscles in your lower body. Pay special attention to the speed and incline so you know how fast and how steep your legs need to go.

Continue reading to see this 470-calorie-burning interval and strength-training workout.

When you don't feel like getting your heart rate up whether you're not feeling well, it's a rest and recovery day, or you don't have time to get all sweaty and take a shower, here's an interval workout that's all about walking. It's geared for the treadmill using the incline, but you can find a hill and do this 50-minute workout outside if you prefer.

Total calories burned: 402

*All calculations are based on a 130-pound woman.

Weight loss on your mind? Kick it up a notch in the workout department with this 41-minute interval workout for the treadmill that will burn about 500 calories. Complete it five times in a week and you are well on your way to burning an extra 3,500 calories — the magic number of calories it takes to lose one pound in a week. This means you would need to cut out about 150 calories daily from your food intake to meet that goal. Not too difficult right?

Continue reading to see this 500-calorie-burning interval workout

There are a thousand and one ways to work out on a treadmill, but my favorite is intervals. Changing your pace every few minutes busts through the boredom often associated with indoor running, and once you set your pace on the treadmill it's difficult to cheat. In this workout the set speed pushes you beyond my comfort zone with a gradual build, and the minute recovery is just long enough to lower your heart rate to rev myself for the next interval. Another reason to love intervals: they help you lose belly fat. This workout combines running with walking, so if you new to intervals you should give it a try.

Ready to check out the workout.

When I first started seeing my trainer, he immediately knew I had sprained my ankle a month or two before meeting with him: my balance was off and the left side of my body had become stronger. As my trainer put it, my left side was overcompensating for the sprain in my right ankle. Instead of spending so much time off of my ankle, he wanted me to start exercising on it as a way to make it strong again.

Besides a ton of balancing exercises, my trainer also put me on the following five-week treadmill plan. An interval workout, the plan combines short bursts of walking with running at a reasonable pace. The intervals ensure that the injured ankle is eased back into all the pressures that come from exercising. The cooldown is also helpful — walking backwards helps with balance and engages underused muscles in the feet and legs. Once I got through his five-week plan, I was able to run continuously at a comfortable pace; and with the help of balancing exercises, I am happy to report that my sprained ankle is no longer weak. This is also an excellent workout if you're new to running and want to build up endurance and speed.

See the five-week rehab treadmill workout after the break!

"Interval training" may sound fancy, but you don't have to be a 20-something fitness fanatic to pull off this pro method. Anyone can incorporate intervals into workouts, and new research out of Australia proves that interval training is a great weight-loss tool even as we age.

In the University of New South Wales study, people who used intervals in their cycling workouts lost three times more weight on average than people who pedaled at a steady pace. That's a pretty convincing argument in favor of intervals, as if I needed more reasons to interval train. Find out more about the study.