Exercise programs can provide many benefits, including improved cardiovascular strength, muscular strength and endurance and flexibility. In addition, workout routines help decrease weight, and the most effective of these combine aerobic activity with resistance exercises to maximize fat and calorie burning.
Always consult with a physician before starting any exercise program.
Fat Burning
If your primary goal is to burn fat, aerobic exercise is the best weight-loss program for you. Aerobic exercise requires oxygen to provide the sustained fat burning that occurs during this type of exercise. Exercising at moderate to vigorous intensity for 20 minutes or longer will maximize your fat-burning benefit. A good guide to know whether you are doing aerobic exercise is that if you can talk during your workout, you have not gone into high-intensity, anaerobic exercise.
The following types of exercises can be used to produce a fat-burning exercise program: dancing; calisthenics like jumping jacks, jump rope or boxing; cycling, rowing, rollerblading, race walking, jogging, swimming or running stairs. A variety of exercise machines produce aerobic workouts, such as treadmills, stationary bikes or ellipticals.
Muscle Building
A pound of muscle burns more calories throughout the day than a pound of fat, even while you're at work or in school. An exercise program that adds muscle mass will help you burn more calories all day long. Resistance workouts build muscle and can include those done with dumbbells, bar bells, free weights or machines, including deadlifts, squats, bench presses and curls; bodyweight exercises, which use your body's weight as resistance, lsuch as pushups, pullups, chinups, lunges, squats, dips and crunches.
Combination Workouts
In order to get the fat burning and long-term calorie burning benefits of an exercise program, either alternate your exercise routines to include aerobic and resistance workouts or add resistance to your aerobic workouts.
For example, setting the resistance levels on your exercise machines to a higher level will help you build muscles while you do your sustained, fat burning workout. Using a pair a dumbbells while you workout on an exercise bike, jog or do aerobic dancing pairs fat burning with muscle building. If all you have available for your workout are exercise machines traditionally used for muscle building, set the machines on a very light weight, which will allow you to use them for longer periods of time, keeping your heart rate up and allowing you to continue to burn fat. Alternate machines that work on legs, arms, chest, back and shoulders, so that you do not encounter muscle fatigue, which causes you to pause from your workout, decreasing the aerobic benefit of this type of program.
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