Short Workouts That Burn Fat
December 12th, 2008 by admin
If you find it hard to lose fat with cardio, here’s some great news for you. Our friend, men’s health trainer Craig Ballantyne, sent me the following fat loss workouts that can really help you lose weight!
In earlier posts, we spoke about the many types of interval training. Craig tells me that research hasn’t shown the best way interval training yet. Because there is NO best interval training workout for fat loss, Craig simply recommends some of his favorites exercises:
a) 1 minute on at 75 – 85% effort, 2-3 minutes off, repeat 6 – 7 times.
b) 30 seconds on at 85 – 90% effort, then 90 seconds off, repeat this 6 – 7 times.
c) 45 seconds on at 85% effort, then 90 seconds off, repeat 6 – 7 times.
d) 20 seconds on at 75 – 85% effort, 40 seconds off, repeat 7 – 8 times.
Make sure to include a warm-up and cool-down after each. Warm-ups include stretching and light bodyweight exercises. I like to walk for at least 10 minutes and stretch when I cool-down.
There’s many types of interval training exercises for the above workouts. Following are a few examples:
You can do treadmill running, hill walking, stationary cycling, sprinting outside (make sure you do extra stretching warm-ups before running), kettlebell swings, medicine ball power woodchoppers, jump rope, rowing machines or swimming. Some people like the elliptical machine, but Craig doesn’t like these. My feeling is that if you can get yourself into a good sweat and really increase your heart rate, then it’s worth it. However, it can be a challenge to really work yourself hard on an eliptical machine.
Recently, I’ve been completing the hill walking with my 2 dogs. It gets them tired and gives me a good/quick workout at lunch time or after work.
If you can’t work yourself hard for more than 30 seconds at a time, Craig’s research shows that as little as 8 seconds on, with 12 seconds off for a total of 20 minutes can be effective. However, building up to 85%+ effort on gym equipment is really difficult. The only way to complete these short burst intervals is when running.
For more in-depth, step-by-step fat burning plans, visit:
This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Fitness training program, Weight loss workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
