The 8-Week Summer Body Challenge

Not quite ready to bare your almost-all in a tank top, short-shorts, or bikini?

Even if you have no intention of showing more skin this summer, consider this program your wake-up call to recharge your motivation and rev up your results.

We asked trainer Jen Ferruggia, a coach at Renegade Fitness in California and creator of bikinibodyworkouts.com, for a program that will help you get stronger, leaner, and more energized—without having to spend all your precious summer days at the gym.

“These workouts are a time-efficient way to help you increase your lean muscle while shedding fat,” says Ferruggia.

Her routines emphasize non-competing, antagonistic alternating superset exercises. That means primarily doing a set of a lower-body exercise, followed by a set of an upper-body exercise, with only a brief rest interval between them.

“Supersetting lower-body exercises with upper-body exercises elicits a higher growth-hormone response,” she explains. “That’s not only better for fat loss, it also has a better conditioning effect, so you don’t need to do a lot of extra cardio.”

Clean up your diet, too (see our 30-Day Summer Body Diet Challenge), and you can expect to see up to 2lbs of fat loss per week, along with increased muscle definition and strength gains, says Ferruggia. Now that’s body confidence worth revealing.

Follow the Whole30 Summer Body Challenge along with this program to refresh your diet and get in your best shape ever. And don’t be intimidated by the thought of a 30-day diet reset, there are plenty of satisfying recipes to get you through.

How it works

Plan to do three days of total-body strength training, one day of HIIT, and an optional challenge session each week. Start each workout with the Dynamic Warmup, which will prime your muscles and get you ready for the heavier work ahead. Time tight? You can also layer the HIIT session or challenges onto one of the existing strength days.

For strength workouts, do the superset in the order given, resting 30 seconds after each superset (exercises under the same number are performed as a superset—for example, 1A, 1B, 1C would be a superset). On days with fewer reps, increase the weight. Avoid doing strength workouts on consecutive days.