Quick Exercises to Lose Belly Fat & Love Handles

Quick Exercises to Lose Belly Fat & Love Handles
Photo Credit fat measure image by Kimberly Reinick from Fotolia.com

Losing belly fat and love handles takes time and effort. However, if you are willing to greatly increase the intensity of the exercises, you can rapidly increase the process. High-intensity exercises take less time to perform than low-intensity, long-duration exercise; and more often than not, yield far better results in a much shorter time period. These exercises are not for everyone, as some people are not capable of performing high-intensity exercises.

Plyometrics

Plyometrics is the use of high-intensity, powerful movements to burn large amounts of calories in a short amount of time. Plyometric exercises use virtually every muscle in the body, including the abs and core, which forces the body to work much harder than it would in a normal workout, thus igniting the metabolism. An example of a plyometric exercise is the squat jump, in which you perform a squat, but then explode up into a jump. You would repeat this for the desired number of repetitions or time.

HIIT

High Intensity Interval Training, also known as HIIT, is a technique that alternates high-intensity cardio with low-intensity "recovery" phases. Typically, the high-intensity cardio phase lasts for 30-60 seconds, while the recovery phase is two to four minutes. In a study published in Science Daily, researchers discovered that interval training increased fat burning by 36 percent, meaning that you can decrease the amount of time needed to burn the same amount of calories.

Tabatas

For the truly brave, there is a technique called the Tabata protocol, named after the researcher who invented them. Tabatas are similar to HIIT, except the intervals are much shorter. In Tabatas, you go as hard as you can for 20 seconds, get a 10 second rest, then back on again. This cycle continues eight times for a total of four minutes. Tabatas greatly shorten the time needed to get a great work out, and can be used with both cardio and resistance machines, making Tabatas even more versatile in the fight against belly fat.

References

Article reviewed by GlennK Last updated on: Mar 28, 2011

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