Are you sabotaging yourself?
Women’s Fitness
with KYLIE JACKES
Personal Trainer
Lifestyle Fitness, Erskineville
Do you find yourself doing the same long, slow, boring cardio and ‘fluffing’ about with light weights?
Are you spending hours in the gym, day after day, seeing no results?
If fat loss is your goal, it’s time to pick up the pace and increase the intensity you are working out at.
The best type of exercise you can do for fat loss is metabolic resistance training (MRT) or high intensity interval training (HIIT).
Basically MRT is resistance training using supersets, doing two exercises one after the other, using different muscle groups, e.g. chest and legs, so little to no rest is required.
MRT can also be performed in a circuit format with a number of exercises in a row one after the other with reduced rest intervals.
MRT can be performed using body weight exercises, dumbbells, machines, kettle bells, resistance bands, etc.
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is short bursts of cardio at a high intensity, e.g. sprinting, skipping, step-ups, cardio equipment, spin class, etc.
You can complete these workouts separately but combine them and you achieve the most time efficient fat-burning workout proven.
Not only are you burning hundreds of calories during your workout but afterwards as well.
You may have heard of the term ‘afterburn’. This is the energy (calories) your body uses in the recovery period after exercise. Its official term is ‘excess post-exercise oxygen consumption’ (EPOC). Recent research has shown EPOCs lasting between 24 – 48 hours after a high intensity session.
After low intensity exercise (e.g. long, slow cardio) EPOC goes back to its normal rate nearly straight away, approximately one to two hours. This means after a high intensity fat-burning session your metabolism continues to work at a higher rate even while you’re sleeping.
I recommend three to four fat-burning sessions per week 30-60 minutes. These sessions must be completed at a high level of intensity. You must get out of your comfort zone, as the harder you work the more calories you burn during and after exercise.
How do you know if you’re out of your comfort zone? A good sign is if you are unable to hold a conversation. Or you can give yourself a score out of 10, if it’s less than seven, you’re not working hard enough. Seven or above is where you want to be.
If you have struggled to lose weight and keep it off in the past, try this high intensity fat-burning training where the sessions are short,
fun, with loads of variety and you’ll love your new fit, lean, toned and sexy body.
info: Visit www.lifestylefitness.com.au
I agree with you, HIIT is where the magic happens.
The fastest way to lose fat is to build muscle. (Women won’t bulk up because they don’t have the testosterone that men do.)
Each pound of lean muscle burns about 40-50 calories per day at a resting metabolic rate. Add 10 lbs of muscle and you’ll burn 400-500 calories. Add 20 lbs and you’ll double that. Forget about how much you weigh. The real results are in inches lost.
To build muscle you want to do high intensity resistance training. High intensity does not mean spending hours in a gym getting an intense workout and it doesn’t mean working out really hard so the sweat’s dripping down your fact. It means doing roughly 8-10 reps with a level of resistance that challenges you enough so that it takes a significant amount of effort to complete that last rep. Then rest for about 30 seconds and move to the next muscle group. Workout out every major muscle group like this 3x times a week like Mon, Wed, Fri and then rest two days. You do not have to spend hours in a gym to effectively build muscle and you don’t even need weights.
Visit my site for free muscle building workouts for resistance tubes.