The best fat burning workouts are those which help to increase your metabolism over a sustained period of time. Long, low intensity cardio workouts have long been cited as the best way to burn fat, more recently however, studies have shown that this is not the optimum way to lose fat. In this article I will unveil two key components to high quality fat burning workouts. These revelations may well surprise you, I know they surprised me when I found out about them - they also helped me to lose over 20lbs of fat over a six month period and keep that weight off, all with very little demand on my time.
These 2 types of exercises should be incorporated into your fat burning workouts;
1. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
This type of training involves working out for short periods of time at a high intensity. HIIT is far more productive for fat-loss because it helps maintain lean muscle mass whilst increasing your body's metabolism over a longer period of time (both during and after exercise) compared to low intensity training. This increase in metabolism promotes fat burning; recent studies have shown that 20 minutes of highly intense exercise burns vastly more fat calories than 45 minutes of the same exercise performed at a low intensity.
Workouts should be performed in short bursts. I recommend beginning with a warm-up of 5 minutes duration at a low intensity followed by 30 seconds of highly intense explosive exercise before lowering intensity for 1 minute. Repeat this high-low cycle 4-5 times and then perform a cool-down at a low intensity for another 5 minutes. Your total HIIT workout should last between 16 and 18 minutes. As you improve you can increase intervals and extend your workout beyond 20 minutes. I recommend working out using this type of routine for no longer than 25 minutes 3-4 times per week.
2. Weight Lifting.
Strength training through lifting weights should comprise an important part of your fat burning workouts.
An intense weight training session helps your body to burn calories during the workout and also elevates your metabolism for as long as 39 hours after your have finished the session. During weight training your body is fueled by carbohydrates and the more intense those sessions are the more depleted carbohydrate stores become, resulting in more fat being burnt during the recovery phase.
Obviously weight lifting promotes muscle gain. This is vital for any fat-loss regime because additional muscle mass results in a higher resting metabolism - more calories are burnt throughout the day. In fact for every 1lb of lean muscle mass your body burns as much as 50 calories per day just to maintain it, that means more fat lost doing absolutely nothing! Rest is also an important part of your fat burning workouts, your body needs time to recover and grow.
Make your weights sessions quick-fire and lift as heavy as you can. My current fat burning workouts incorporate weights 3 days per week, I make sure every session I do is highly intense with fairly short rests between sets and each workout lasts no longer than 45 minutes. Follow this example and you will be well on your way to losing that stubborn body fat that has thus far refused to leave!
If you really want to blast fat away quickly and easily then I thoroughly recommend checking out The 7 Secrets To Fat-loss which unveils 7 of the most over-looked aspects to fat-loss which most people will never known. Get the upper hand by learning the secrets and applying them to your own fat burning workouts.
Should you wish to view a number of specific exercises that I have used numerous times to accelerate my own fat-loss then please visit Fat Burning Exercises [http://www.squidoo.com/fatburningexercises] and lose that fat forever!
Daniel Depp is a health and fitness fanatic. He is a former professional athlete who, since retiring found himself over-eating and piling on weight. He decided that enough was enough and embarked on a mission to gather as much information about weight-loss and fitness as he possibly could and then impliment these in his own life. He has since lost over 20 pounds of body fat, lives a healthy and vibrant lifestyle and is committed to helping others do the same. Visit his website at Secrets To Fat-loss to learn the '7 Forbidden Secrets' to ultimate fat-loss which will help you achieve the body you always wanted, permanently.
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