The goal to burn fat is as popular as the goal to build muscle for everyday gym goers. Right now, as you read this article, around the world, in gyms everywhere – a war is being fought – the war on fat. Somewhere there is someone like you and me who is giving their all, pushing the barriers of the discomfort they thought they could handle, smashing through their personal “wall” and forging a will of steel in order to unleash a hard body waiting patiently under a more endomorphic one. They aspire to be all they can be and are willing to pay in sweat.
Like any battle you need the right weapons to help you win the fight, an array of arrows for your quiver and an arsenal at your disposal to be unleashed without mercy when it counts. If you are a soldier in the war to burn fat then the thing that is going to be your Iron Man Mark V battle armor is knowledge.
You already have the will power and desire to improve yourself, you want to burn fat so bad that it hurts and as you are have the hungry look in your eye of someone who wants to achieve their goals – we at ConFITdent want to help you out by making sure your efforts recoup the rewards you deserve for your sweat. So, before you march in the gym to burn fat and unleash the fury – make sure you are carrying this advice.
A Burn Fat Fact: Resistance is Not Futile
The first thing a lot of people think when trying to shed fat is that cardio is going to be their first port of call, but they have more weapons at their disposal than just that. It would surprise many to know that weight training has a huge effect on the burning of fat and should be in anyone’s regime if they are serious about changing their body composition for the better.
By doing compound lifts that use any of the large muscle groups such as squats, deadlifts, bench presses, lat pulldowns and shoulder presses – you are firing up your body’s metabolism, turning your muscles into a natural furnace that is torching calories and will burn fat long after you have left the gym. Over time, as you train and your muscles get fuller and larger from doing weights, your Basal metabolic rate will naturally be higher too. This means your body will burn more fat and calories doing absolutely nothing different than it did before you were weight training which is a big bonus.
A great way to weight train and maximize the potential of your ability to burn fat from your workout is to kick your workout off with a superset. This is when you pair up a couple of exercises and hit one after the other before your rest between sets. Pairing a big lower body lift with a big upper body lift is the way forward. For example : A set of deadlifts followed by bench presses then rest and repeat, or a back squat followed by a military press in the same format. By doing this nearly all the major muscle groups in your body are getting hit in one go, maximizing your efforts to burn fat fast. Also, because you are using your whole body, you will get a bigger release of your growth hormones meaning larger gains in the muscle department.
An extension of the rule of using more muscles to fire up your metabolism to burn fat is combining two or more moves to make one big move that hits up a lot of muscles in one rep. If you are doing a deadlift then why not put a shoulder shrug in every rep? If you are doing a squat or lunge with a bar or dumbbells why not incorporate a shoulder press into the rep? You have the resistance right there, so get the most out of it.
Burn Fat Like a Brawler: Take No Prisoners
Imagine you are a boxer or MMA fighter and you are stepping into a ring with an opponent and your manager says to you: “I want you to fight this guy in one of two ways: Either punch the hell out of him with everything you’ve got and go for the KO early or slap him for 12 rounds going the distance and hoping to win on points.
Of course you are going to go for the knockout, fight hard with a hope of dominating your rival and proving your superiority. This rule applies to cardio, a quality over quantity approach to bring results. Why do something for 60 minutes if you can get what you want in 20 minutes?
Putting this into practice when it comes time to burn fat is all about intensity, getting a sweat on and getting out of breath – smashing through the wall. For instance, if your chosen cardio session in the gym is going to be hitting the rowing machine for 45 minutes to an hour at a moderate pace, going for a big distance whilst thinking that the further you go the more you will burn fat. Of course you will reap some benefits from this, you’re exercising after all, but if you really want to stick it to your body fat then you can do it in half the time by rowing flat out like your life depended on it for 30 seconds and then rowing slowly for 1 minute to recover and then repeating this process for 21 minutes to burn fat more efficiently. In that 30 seconds you are using your anaerobic energy system to produce the effort consequently sending your metabolism into over drive, in the minute of slow recovery strokes you are using your aerobic energy system which helps prepare you for another hard burst of activity when that next interval comes round.
You can apply this to any cardio machine or as we like to say “furnace to burn fat” in the gym including a Cross trainer (elliptical), Treadmill, Bike, etc. Go for maximum effort for a short interval, recover and then repeat. Not only will you effectively and efficiently to burn fat, but now you will have more time to enjoy life outside of the gym.
Just in case you are wondering why long/slow duration endurance based cardio is not as effective as short intense sessions, the reason again comes down to efficiency. To burn fat effectively, you need to understand that fat provides the highest concentration of energy for the human body compared to any other Macronutrient. One pound of fat can provide around 3600 calories of energy. If you regularly do endurance based cardio, this encourages your body to store fat as it wants you to have the best form of energy to fuel these long sessions. In other words, it slows your metabolism down and makes it harder to burn fat. So if you want to use cardio effectively to burn fat like a brute then you better make your cardio like Gimli from Lord of the Rings – Short and Hardcore.
Burn Fat with Back Up
Some people act as a lone wolf, head strong and nothing is going to come between them and what they want. Like Clubber Lang said in Rocky 3 : “I live alone, I train alone, and I will win the title alone.” If you are that person then fair enough and this tip won’t apply to you.
Getting a gym partner can really do wonders for your workout on a psychological level whether it is because they motivate you by encouraging you or competing with you – either way, they can help you keep up your intensity and it is intensity that will lead to the decimation of your body fat percentage as you burn fat like a machine. If you are the competitive type then in an ideal world the person you train with should be at a similar level to you and have similar goals as well as having that drive to push themselves with a bit of friendly competition. This can make the gym a lot of fun for some people and you can easily fly through a session as you try to race your buddy on a treadmill or seeing who can get the better rowing split time. Maybe even concoct an evil circuit of back to back exercises and see who can complete it in the quicker time or perhaps just do good old fashioned planks to failure and finish off the session with the first person to fail buying dinner.
There is always a chance that you might not be the competitive type (yet) and having a gym partner like that maybe counter-productive to you. Every person is different and what gets the best out of one person might get the worst out of another. Maybe you need a gym buddy who has a bit more knowledge than you do, knows how to encourage and motivate when you are hitting the wall and points out the positives rather than picking you up and squatting you in the middle of the gym.
Whatever sort of person you are, having a friend in your corner when you are going another round in your efforts to burn fat can make a big difference.
Burn Fat Like a Class Act
Gyms are not all about the weights area and the cardio machines, there are a lot of gyms out there that can offer you another way to burn fat where the sun don’t shine and that is classes. Whether it is body combat, boot camp, Boxercise, core stability, circuit training or any other of a huge number of types fitness class, usually every gym will offer something like this and sometimes inclusive of your membership.
The number one advantage with a class is that they come with an instructor and it is their job to make you work, they will know how to do it – trust me. The next is the fact you will not be alone, you will be surrounded by other people working up a sweat too – which will either drive you and inspire your competitive side while also giving you the nudge to work hard as a team player with the class as they all try to burn fat.
Another plus is that this can do wonders for your confidence. If you are on a mission to burn fat there is a good chance that you may need a boost in the realm of confidence. It may seem like a baptism under fire in this case to go and train in a group of people who may or may not be of a better ability than you or be in better shape. Fact is, there is always someone better out there whether you know them or not and the sooner you accept that and just concentrate on being a better you than you were yesterday the sooner you will become the person you want to be. Don’t be worried about people laughing at you, that is REALLY unlikely because they, like you – are there to workout and burn fat like a beast. If they have time to laugh at you and you have time to notice then neither of you is working hard enough. Go, enjoy yourself and bring me the scalps of the 500 calories you are going to annihilate along the way.
Burn Fat, Adapt, and Survive
In 1786 the Scottish poet Robert Burns famously wrote: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley.” Which means that despite how well you can plan to do something – it can always go wrong. There is always a chance, no matter what. That can easily apply to the gym, in fact, it totally applies to it. Sometimes you can turn up there, hit all the weights and machines you want to in your session, it all goes great, smooth and you feel like you have achieved something.
We all want those days, they don’t always happen. It could be busier than usual and you could find yourself cooling down while you queue for the squat rack or the free weight area or a treadmill. Here is where adaptability is essential because if you want to keep up the intensity needed to burn fat, you have to have a backup plan.
If you do get to the part of your workout where you are going to hit the squat rack and you can’t get near the thing because of a group of guys have surrounded the equipment like a pack of hyenas, you could ask if they would like to share, or you can go use a leg press machine instead to get a very similar effect or train a different muscle group and come back to it. All that matters is that you keep your intensity up, keep working, don’t elongate your rest past what it needs to be and keep your heart rate up. The will to succeed it critical when it comes time to burn fat and this means overcoming any obstacles.
This can apply to anything: Can’t get a treadmill? Use something else and give it hell anyways. Your class has been cancelled? Hit the cardio area. The gym is closed due to a power failure? Go do sprints in the park. Always have a back-up plan so you never have to mess up a session of fat burning because you were not prepared.
To quote a little philosophy: “Be not like the mighty oak in a storm that breaks because it resists the wind, be as supple as a reed and move with the storm so you do not break.”