Some exercise programs emphasize muscle building, while others focus on cardiovascular fitness. Others target muscular and aerobic endurance, while yet others improve your anaerobic fitness. If you want to burn fat, however, the best two types of exercise are moderate-intensity and aerobic exercise, which burn a higher percentage of calories from fat. There are many easy ways to create both types of workouts.
Slow-Burn Exercises
Exercising at between 50 and 65 percent of your maximum heart rate (MHR) burns more calories from fat than more high-intensity exercise like aerobics or sprint training, according to health experts like Monica Neave, an ISSA Certified Fitness Therapist. Exercising at this level burns about 90 percent calories from fat, as opposed to 50 percent calories from fat during aerobic activity and 15 percent calories from fat during interval training. However, because you are working at a slower pace, you will burn fewer calories than if you use the other two exercise methods.
This type of exercise includes power walking, using a treadmill or exercise bike at a rate that doesn't have you sweating or out of breathe, swimming steady laps in a pool, walking up and down the stairs of a stadium or your home, rollerblading, bike riding or jumping rope at a slow pace.
To calculate your heart rate for this type of activity, subtract your age from 220 to get your MHR. If you are 40 years old, your MHR would be 180. Multiply that number by .5 and .65 to get your best fat-burning workout heart rate.
High-Energy Exercises
With aerobic exercise, you still burn a high percentage of calories from fat, and more of them in total number, since you are working harder and burning more calories. To get into the aerobic zone, get your heart rate up to 70 to 80 percent of your MHR and keep it there for 15 minutes or longer.
Aerobic exercise DVDs often use coordinated footwork or require equipment, making it a bit more complicated than you might like. Few exercises are easier than a treadmill or exercise bike, but they use limited muscles. Add a rowing machine routine for an overall body workout, or use an elliptical machine with arm levers. Even if they offer an electronic console, they are generally pretty easy to figure out how to use.
Jogging, jump rope, swimming, cycling, jumping jacks, running in place, boxing moves, dancing and inline skating, done at the right intensity and for the right duration all create aerobic exercises.
Cross-Training Workouts
If you only do one type of exercise, you muscle will adapt to the work, and you'll see decreasing results over time. UK national track coach Brian Mac explains, this basic concept of exercise, "The body will react to the training loads imposed by increasing its ability to cope with those loads."
Cross train to work your lower body and upper body, and to build muscular and aerobic strength and endurance. A circuit-training workout has you performing a variety of exercises using lighter weights or resistance settings, with more repetitions, and short breaks in between to keep your heart rate up.
An example of an easy circuit training workout would include a series of bodyweight exercises done during a period of 30 minutes, with one-minute breaks in between. Bodyweight exercises include push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, pull-ups, chin-ups, lunges and squats.
Another circuit training workout would have you switch exercise machines every five or 10 minutes, with a one-minute break in between. Start with a treadmill to warm up. After five minutes, switch to a rowing machine to add an upper body workout. Move to an exercise bike, sitting and standing while pedaling. Finish on an elliptical machine, or go back to the treadmill using a higher rate of speed or incline.
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