Your love handles lie over the abdominal muscles known as the obliques. While abdominal exercises aimed at the obliques will help tone the underlying muscle, you cannot reduce the fat covering the muscle without reducing the amount of fat throughout your body, according to Strength Fitness from Penn State University. Combine various types of exercise to reduce your love handles. Ensure your safety by consulting a doctor before starting an exercise program.
Aerobic Training
Aerobic exercise will help you quickly burn calories to reduce your overall body fat. Aerobic exercise can include activities like brisk walking, cycling, running, jogging or a variety of active sports. Make a list of aerobic activities you would enjoy in your daily routine. This will allow you to enjoy incorporating the 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine into your daily routine on at least five days each week. When you fail to enjoy the aerobic activity you engage in, you have an increased risk of stopping your exercise routine. Each time you exercise, get your heart rate and breathing rate up to a level where you can talk but have a difficult time singing for at least 12 minutes to allow your body to start producing fat-burning enzymes, according to Strength Fitness.
Strength Exercise
In addition to aerobic training, include eight to 10 strength-training exercises in your workout program at least twice a week, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Use a resistance that will allow you to perform only eight to 12 repetitions of an exercise before failing. Include exercises to work all of the major muscle groups in your body, including exercises such as squats, forward lunges, bench presses, push-ups, chin-ups and leg presses. Strength training will not only help you tone and build muscle, but it will also help you prevent muscle loss caused by aging and dieting. It can take 48 to 96 hours for your muscle to heal after a strength training session, according to Strength Fitness. Allow your muscles time to heal by not performing strength training session two days in a row.
Oblique Exercises
Tone the muscles under your love handles by including various abdominal exercises in your exercise routine. Exercises that focus on your oblique abdominal muscles include forward lunges, hip rotations in a push-up position, side planks, dirty dog, bicycle crunches and supine dead bug, according to the American Council on Exercise. Fitness magazine suggests incorporating a medicine ball and exercise ball into your abdominal routine. To ensure that you focus each exercise on your oblique abdominal muscles, you need proper form and technique throughout each exercise. A personal trainer can help you perform exercises correctly and efficiently.
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