If you're ready to get serious about weight loss, forget what you think you know about training to lose weight. Traditional training programs that have you on the treadmill for countless hours a week often don't work, and they don't garner long-term results. A successful training program for weight loss should include cardiovascular exercise and strength training, done at moderate-to-intense levels five days a week. Combined with a healthy diet, you will finally get results.
Intensity Level
Many people who are trying to lose weight mistakenly spend hours on the treadmill or the elliptical machine at the gym at a leisurely pace, thinking that if they do enough they'll burn fat. This is not an efficient or effective way to train to lose weight. In order to burn excess fat, up the ante by raising the intensity of your workouts. A study at Laval University in Quebec published in 1994 showed that participants who engaged in several short periods of intense exercise lost more fat than participants who did long periods of light to moderate exercise.
Strength Training
Weight-loss hopefuls often make the mistake of thinking that more cardio is what they need to do to lose weight, when building muscle is the most effective way to increase your metabolism and burn fat. Muscle tissue burns more calories while at rest than fat tissue, increasing your body's ability to metabolize fuel in the form of food even while you're at rest. Build strength by doing compound exercises such as pushups, pullups and squats, which use more than one muscle group and elicit a higher metabolic burn than exercises that only use one muscle group. Choose a combination of total body exercises and perform them at a moderate to high level of intensity three times per week.
Interval Training
Interval training is a more effective way to do aerobic exercise that will get you better weight loss results in less time. The premise is simple: Do whatever exercise you normally do but break it up into shorter periods of more intense activity. For example, the elliptical machine at your gym likely has an interval setting in which it breaks up a 30-minute workout into six to 10 smaller segments, alternating high intensity work with recovery periods. This causes your heart rate to rise and fall several times during the course your workout, burning more fat and calories than a steady light to moderate pace. Do interval workouts twice a week in addition to one or two regular aerobic workouts.
Circuit Training
Circuit training combines strength training and aerobic exercise into one efficient high-intensity workout. By alternating total-body strength exercises with aerobic intervals, you can keep your heart rate up and get a better fat-burning workout than just resistance training or aerobic exercise. An example of a circuit training workout might be: Five rounds of 15 squats, 10 pushups and five pullups with a 200m sprint between rounds and after the final round. Aim to work at your highest capacity and keep the heart rate elevated. Do this type of workout one to two days a week.
Member Comments