Before jumping into a
diet, you must determine your ideal weight. This will be your guide on your
weight loss journey. Fast
weight loss doesn’t imply that you drop 50
pounds overnight; a few
pounds can take months to shed and for obese individuals, it can take years to lose the desired amount of weight. How fast you lose weight will depend on how focused you are on your
diet.
Are you looking for that jump start to rev your metabolism and get you bathing suit ready? The following ten tips will improve your workouts and ignite your metabolism. Try some or all of these tips but beware, the result may be a number of admiring second glances and stares when you don’t have that bikini or pair of trunks.
1. The majority of your workouts should be composed of free-weight or cable
exercises.
Compared to machines, free-weight and cable movements often require more skill, create muscular balance, and have a greater metabolic cost. For example, it is more difficult to balance the
weights, and to coordinate muscles when performing free-weight
exercises. Although this may sound like a disadvantage, it is actually a benefit. By balancing and stabilizing free-
weights or cables you are working more muscles through a greater range of motion resulting in more muscles developed and more
calories burned.
2. Use mostly compound (multi-joint and multi-muscle)
exercises.
When focusing on improving
body composition, you can't worry about “detail”
exercises, so you should use
exercises that'll get you the biggest bang for your buck. Isolation
exercises can be used at the end of a workout to work on a specific weakness, but only do the bare minimum.
Virtually every savvy
fitness professional is privy to the fact that compound
exercises recruit the most muscle groups for any given
body part.
If you seek lean muscle and the increase in metabolism that comes with it, you must choose
exercises that allow for the greatest load. One of the main reasons why squats are superior to leg extensions for quadriceps development relates to the fact that the load you can expose the quadriceps to is much greater with squats. That’s why presses and dips will give you great triceps development, while triceps kickbacks will do little for triceps development and even less for the metabolism.
A good rule of thumb is to use lifts that will allow you to use the most weight. These will have a systemic effect on your
body that'll help maintain or increase your muscle mass and in turn ignite your metabolism.
3. Super-set or group
exercises.
Perform either non-competing muscle group training or antagonist training. Non-competing muscle group training would involve doing a set of a lower
body exercise, and following it up with an upper
body exercise Antagonist training is executed by alternating
exercises that target opposing muscle groups (e.g. chest and back). The list of benefits includes: quicker recovery, greater strength levels and shorter workout times.
This design can be a huge advantage in your mission to burn
fat. If you alternate
exercises for opposing or non-competing muscle groups, you’ll be able to keep your
heart rate elevated and burn
calories like a blast furnace!
4. Keep rep ranges, in general, between 8 and 12.
Through research, it has been determined that the best range for hypertrophy (muscle gain) is roughly between 8-12 reps. Since the main focus of your resistance training efforts is to gain lean
body mass and stimulate your metabolism, this rep range fills the bill perfectly. “High reps for tone and
fat loss” is the “big kahuna” of all training myths! Somehow the
aerobics,
yoga and Pilate’s community have convinced us that when we perform bodyweight
exercises or light resistance training for high reps, our muscles magically take on a beautiful shape without growing or bulging. On the other hand, if you challenge yourself with moderately heavy
weights, your
body will take on a bulky, unflattering appearance. If you believe this, you probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy!
5. Rest only 30 to 60 seconds between sets.
When you keep the rest periods under one minute, it’s easier to stay focused on the task at hand and keeps your
heart rate elevated. In addition, it forces your muscles to recover more quickly between sets, along with keeping your nervous system revved up.
If your first movement in an upper/lower
body superset is squats, you might want to rest 60 seconds before attempting your second movement. However, if your first exercise is a fairly "easy" exercise, like lat pull downs, you might only wish to wait 30 seconds before doing the second part of the superset.
6. Every session should consist of approximately six to eight
exercises. Why? Because empirical evidence has shown that normal trainees can consistently maintain six to eight
exercises per session without burning out.
It’s imperative to base your exercise selection around compound, multi-joint
exercises. Seventy-five percent (75%) of your
exercises for each session must be compound
exercises. Six single-joint isolation
exercises are not going do the trick. Sure, you can perform a few isolation
exercises, but the majority of your exercise choices should be multi-joint.
7. Perform Total
Body Workouts
First and foremost, you must drop the notion that a muscle group can only be trained once or twice a week.
Fitness enthusiasts from the past didn't train that way and you shouldn't either. The more frequent muscle producing more
fat burning sessions you can have, the better.
8.
Cardio is not the
cure-all for Obesity
Cardiovascular exercise aids in the creation of a caloric deficit, but the caloric expenditure during
cardio is temporary.
Strength training addresses the core of the problem by permanently increasing the rate at which the
body burns
calories by adding muscle. The best programs will include both
strength training and
cardiovascular training, but the core or the programs effectiveness is resistance training.
9. When you do
cardio, do it first thing in the morning.
Do your
cardiovascular training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. You’ve gone 8 or more hours without eating, so your blood sugar levels are at their lowest when you first wake up. After about 10-15 minutes of
cardio training on an empty stomach, you’ll have burned up all your remaining blood sugar.
Once your blood sugar is used up, the only remaining source of fuel your
body has to continue with your
cardio exercise is your stored
body fat.
10. Vary your pace during your
cardio training sessions.
Don’t maintain a constant steady pace while you’re on the
treadmill or elliptical machine. Numerous studies have shown you’ll burn more
calories and more
fat if you train in intervals.
Start out by going for 1 minute at your normal walking pace. Then, for the next 30 seconds, speed it up to a run. After the 30 seconds at an increased pace, slow back down to your original pace for 1 more minute. This is known as an interval. Repeat this interval style
cardio for 10-20 minutes.
Performing your
cardio in this “interval” fashion will allow you to burn more
fat and
calories in less time than just keeping a nice steady pace. This will increase the results you see while reducing your time on the
treadmill, stationary bike, or whatever form of
cardiovascular training you do.
To find out how you can burn the
fat and lose weight quickly gets more information at [link removed].
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