Superior athletic performance does not come from a single source but is a combination of power, strength, endurance skill, energy stores, and mental ability among others. When all these features are focused on getting leaner by using the most effective fat burning exercises, results come faster.
However, not everyone is built to be an athlete, but most people can benefit from doing consistent rounds of fat burning exercises to get fitter, become leaner, lose weight, or achieve any other fitness goal that they may have. Here are some ground rules to follow when trying to shed excess body fat and keep it off:
Make Your Fat Burning Exercises More Intense
Intensity is key to losing fat and keeping it off. That means working at a higher intensity is going to bring not only faster but also long term fat loss results. Individuals who train at low intensity levels or in their comfort zone are not going to target the problem areas as effectively as others who work outside their comfort zone.
The truth is that the harder an individual works, the more calories he will burn. For this reason, workouts known as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT are considered very favourable for maximum fat loss. These fat burning exercises alternate between highly energetic bursts of activity, followed by exercises of lower intensity or even complete recovery.
These combinations of low and high intensity exercises not only burn more calories during the workout but also after the workout is over. The result is burning more fat and calories in the time after the HIIT workout than after another workout that is done at a steady pace.
To keep seeing results, the workout must also keep increasing its intensity level. As the body gets fitter, it will be better able to deal with increasing demands, so intensity levels of fat burning exercises will also need to be increased.
Be Consistent With Your Fat Burning Workout
Energy that is burnt during a workout depends not only on the activity itself but also on how much effort is put into the workout. This includes the skill level of the individual, the duration as well as the frequency of the workout. Given these reasons, it becomes important to choose fat burning exercises that the individual actually enjoys.
Doing exercises that are gratifying will ensure that you stick to your exercise routine and are consistent in your performance.
Target Larger Muscles in Your Fat Burning Exercises
Intense fat burning exercises involve engaging the larger muscle groups of the body. Doing a workout that targets large muscle groups in the back, chest and legs is an effective way to burn more calories. Including multiple muscle groups into one exercise not only burns more calories than isolation exercises, they also burn more fat while building strength at the same time.
Combining large and small muscle groups in fat burning exercises gives an effective workout for the upper and the lower body at the same time. When repeats are done quickly with minimal rest in between, calorie burn is boosted and the workout takes less time as well.
Make Your Exercise Routine Sustainable
While intensity and effort are important factors, so is sustainability of a workout. To burn calories effectively, the combination of fat burning exercises needs to be sustained for a reasonable period of time. This means doing the workout for a long enough duration that will yield results.
As an example, skipping is a great and intense exercise, but not very good for burning fat if it can only be done for three minutes. Instead aim to choose exercises that span a period of 20 – 60 minutes so that the body is taxed enough to shed the fat. Experts recommend three to five workout sessions a week with a minimal duration of twenty minutes each and going up to an hour if possible.
For shorter sessions, a very intense form of exercise routine known as Tabata Workout may be used where the individual works to improve both their aerobic and anaerobic capacities. However, Tabata Training is not for everyone since most people are not used to pushing into the anaerobic zone, and only those individuals who are physically very fit should try it.
Add Cardio into the Mix
To make the fat burning exercises more effective, experts recommend combining strength training with cardio for better results. A combination of both types of exercises also burns more body fat in less time. It is well known that losing stubborn body fat involves at least some form of aerobic activity. Aerobic activity by itself uses fat to be used as a primary fuel source with carbs and protein being burnt to a lesser extent. As such, in order to lose fat effectively, some degree of cardio is obligatory.
Aim for the After Burn
The well-known secret to burning fat fast is to exercise the major muscles groups and reap the benefits of an after burn. An after burn results when the body uses additional calories to recover from an intense workout. After a high intensity workout, the body burns extra calories and fat reserves way after the workout has ended. These results can only be achieved when doing intense fat burning exercises and not while working at moderate intensity. That is why a short, yet intense workout can yield more fat burning benefits than a longer, less intense workout.
Unveil your secrets to burning fat in the comments below!