Burn Major Calories at Home

For a cheap, convenient routine that's fast (and fun), just grab a towel: Our workout uses ordinary hand towels to boost the slimming and sculpting power of traditional exercises.

By gliding through the moves, you target more muscles to maintain your balance. Add a three-minute cardio burst after each exercise and you'll rev up your heart rate and burn even more fat—research shows that alternating strength moves with cardio intervals burns as many calories as jogging, builds more metabolism-boosting muscle than lifting weights solo, and can even shrink your waistline more effectively than cardio alone.

Best of all, you can customize the workout to the time you have—15, 30, or 45 minutes just three times a week.

The expert: Troy Meier, certified fitness trainer and wellness manager at Canyon Ranch Spa Club at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, designed this routine.

Workout at a glance

What you need: Two hand towels and a smooth floor surface (like wood, tile, or linoleum). If your floors are carpeted, you can use paper plates and a single towel.

How to do it: Perform the exercises in the order shown. Start with the Main Move. If that's too difficult, do the Make It Easier variation. Not challenging enough? Try the Make It Harder version. After each move, without resting, do a three-minute cardio burst (at right). Go through the routine once if you have only 15 minutes (you'll burn up to 143 calories), or three times for a 45-minute session that burns up to 428. Aim for three or four workouts a week.

For faster results: Perform the whole routine four times through without stopping, and do 30 to 60 minutes of moderate cardio on alternate days.

The 3-Minute Cardio Burst

Choose from the list below, ranked from least intense (burns 265 calories*) to most intense (428 calories*). After each strength move, do a cardio burst for three continuous minutes (set a timer if needed), then go on to the next exercise.

1. Move and Groove: Turn on some tunes and dance—the more you shake it, the more calories you'll melt!

2. Towel Shuffle: Stand with knees slightly bent, arms extended, holding towel taut at chest height. Step right foot to right followed by left foot three times; repeat to left.

3. Knee-Ups: Holding towel, do a little hop as you raise left knee and pass towel under leg from left hand to right. Repeat with right leg.

4. Stair Sizzler: Attack a set of stairs: Walk or jog up and down or, if you only have a couple of stairs, simply step up and down repeatedly.

*For a 150-pound woman doing 45-minute plan

Stand with right foot on towel. Slide leg back, bending knees to lower into a back lunge, keeping left knee over ankle and coming onto ball of right foot.

Without lifting foot, slide right leg back to center, then forward, lowering into a front lunge, right knee bent over ankle.

Slide right leg back to center to complete a rep. Do eight times, then switch sides. (Now do a cardio burst.)

Make It Easier: Do just the back lunge portion of the exercise eight times.

Make It Harder: Add pulses: While in lunge, raise and lower body a few inches three to five times before sliding foot back in.