Lose Belly Fat Fast

Archive for the ‘Weight Loss Exercise’ Category

Weight lifting is an excellent method for building muscles, getting a nice toned body and losing weight. It has many pros compared to other methods (like running for weight loss) a work out can be pretty short yet very effective, it’s easy to scale up or down depending on your fitness level. There are many different exercise so you will never get bored of doing the same thing. Different exercise allow you to target different muscle groups – letting you sculpt your body the way you want it.

Yet for all it’s pros there is a major con – weight lifting can be dangerous! The danger comes from the fact that many of the most effective exercise involve compound movements, and require good technique to perform. Do them with bad technique and you risk suffering an injury, either right away or eventually (depending on the weight you use and just how wrong your technique is.)

Also, unlike body weight exercise, where you can get injured by in most cases you will see a potential injury coming a long way before you get injured. And most injuries are some variation of pulling a muscle and comes from doing many repetitions of a given exercise. In contrast with weight lifting you can potentially get a serious injury in just one move. It doesn’t even have to be a heavy lift, even moderate amount can cause a serious injury if your technique is wrong enough.

This shouldn’t stop you from incorporating weight lifting into your work outs, as it is very, very effective. It does however mean that you should learn the technique before you jump in, this is especially vital for guys who have a tendency of going for heavy weights to “see how much I can lift.” So learn the technique first, using very, very low weights to practice moves (a broomstick is a popular replacement for barbell to learn technique.)

If you are serious about using weight lifting as your main exercise method, then joining a gym that has a weight lifting program or joining some classes where a certified instructor will teach you the correct technique is a good idea. Although you can teach yourself fairly well by watching instructional videos on youtube just try to learn why the move is done a certain way, in addition to learning how to do it.

This is a part 2 post and you can read the first one here: Weight Training Good For Weight Loss?

Weight training can be very effective for weight loss for much the same reasons that interval training is – it allows you to get a good work out in a relatively short amount of time no matter how good (or bad) your fitness level is. It also builds muscles and is the exercise of choice if you want to get a tone body or trying to lose the last few pounds of stomach fat.

Now, because your goal is to lose weight (and get a toned body) in the shortest amount of time you want to do exercise that burn the most calories. That means you want to do compound movements rather than isolated. Compound movements involve more muscles which results in more calories burned. In addition compound movements are better for over all fitness, because they involve several muscles you build up all muscle groups simultaneously and don’t run into a situation where one muscles group is stronger than the other which can make you more susceptible to an injury.

Sounds good, but I never did weight training – what exactly are compound movements?
Compound movements are exercise that involve several muscle groups, for example a dead lift is a compound movement, much like a squat, on the other hand a bicep curl is an isolated movement that only involves biceps. So, avoid doing exercise for isolated muscles and do compound exercise like dead lifts or sauqts for the best results.

Keep in mind though that weight training requires technique in order to stay injury free. So start with very, very low weights and learn the technique before increasing weight. I would recommend going to a gym and seeing if they have a pro there that can help you learn the correct way to do those exercise. Do make sure that said pro actually know what he or she is doing and actually have experience in weight training.

Also, I would highly advise you to do those exercise with free weights and avoid machines. Most machines have several flaws in their design which makes using them for complex compound exercise a bad idea, as you will likely injure yourself at some point.

Weight training – it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of weight loss exercise, but it is never the less very effective for that purpose. The reason weight training doesn’t jump as the exercise to do to lose weight is because there are many exercise you can do, all of which would be referred to as weight training but not all of them are effective for burning fat. So people might be thinking of different things when they hear the term.

I remember reading a quote from some Chinese philosopher along the lines of: “People would solve half of their problems if they learned to call things the same name” and it couldn’t be more true in this case. For example someone doing bicep curls would most likely say that they are doing weight training, as would someone who’s trying to bench press an enormous amount, as will someone who’s doing circuit training with weights. Yet those exercise have a completely different purpose and produce different results.

So, what makes weight training good for weight loss, and what kind of exercise should one do if losing weight is the goal? Well, as I’ve mentioned several times throughout this blog cardio exercise have a limited usefulness time window during which they are very effective (read: Cardio Exercise – the good and the bad ) After your fitness gets to a certain level you will have to spend more and more time doing cardio to maintain results.

Now if you don’t want to spend half a day on a treadmill (and who does?) you have change something – you need to do exercise that are harder for you to do. One way to do this is to do exercise at high(er) intensity levels – like interval training. the other way is to use weight training. Also, weight training also accomplishes a side goal of looking muscular, so that’s nice as well.

In my next post I’ll touch on which weight training exercise are effective for weight loss, and which aren’t, so be sure to check it out!

Should you do cardio work outs like jogging or ridding a bike if your goal is to lose weight? One one hand jogging, running on a treadmill or taking a spin class are done by many people who want to lose weight or stay in shape. On the other hand you can’t help but wonder if slowly running on a treadmill for an hour is really the best way to spend that time when it comes to working out. I’ve touched on those topics in previous posts: Running to lose weight and Effective weight loss exercise But this one is going to look at it from a bit different perspective.

The Good

Cardio exercise bring a number of other benefits which makes them a must have for any work out program. Running or biking improves your stamina, heart and the general cardiovascular system as well as the general fitness level of your body. Cardio also forms a foundation that is required for all exercise that have any sort of speed element to them. After all, if you can’t slowly run for half an hour, doing exercise at a fast pace will just do more harm than good.

The Bad

While there are some pluses to working out at a moderate pace as far as weight loss goes. It should be obvious to anyone that working at a higher pace equals working harder which results in more energy spent and more calories burned. Running as fastas you can for 10 minutes, you will burn much more calories than if you slowly jog for the same 10 minutes. So sadly, cardio exercise do not produce the best results as far as weight loss is concerned.

The Ugly

Come on, you knew this one was coming There isn’t really anything about cardio that could qualify for the ugly section. However since I was too tempted to add the “the ugly” I have to put something here! I would say that general awareness of the good and the bad of cardio is very lacking, which somewhat qualifies it for this part. A lot of people don’t seem to realize that there are better exercise for weight loss than running or biking. And while running is an excellent exercise, running 5 days a week for an hour or more at a time really isn’t the best way to spend your time, if your goal is weight loss.

That’s about wraps it up. Cardio is great and a must for any work out program, but it’s not the be all that some people make it out to be. As always, a healthy mix of exercise is the best.

Who wouldn’t want to get a great work out in under 15 minutes? I am sure we all would love to be able to get a nice work out in such a short time. And that is exactly what interval training allows one to do! (you may want to read my previous post on Interval Training.) Interval training is of course more of a methodology and less of a work out program, as such you can use just about any type of exercise for it.

Although you can use just about any exercise for this purpose, body weight exercise are probably best – you can do them fast with relatively low chances of injury. Where as say trying to do Olympic lifts at fast pace would compromise technique and increase the chance of an injury. But let’s get a bit more specific and actually list a few quick and simple exercise you can use for amazing work outs:

1) Probably the easiest of them all but amazingly effective tabata squats – do as many squats as you can for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, 8 intervals. (by the way, Tabata was the name of the scientist who did a lot of research on interval training if I recall correctly) The goal is to get the highest total number of squats. What makes this exercise so awesome, aside from its effectiveness is that it doesn’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere, at home or in a hotel room.

2) Running is a great exercise, but if you want to get a great work out without spending a lot of times you can use sprints to do just that. Go to a track field (would look kind of weird if you did this on the street) run a 100 meter as fast as you can, take a short break (up to a minute or so) then run another 100 meters. Do it 5 times and you’ll burn so many calories it’s unreal. not only that but the entire thing will only take you about 6-7 minutes!

3) Getting a bit bored? Why not combine a few different exercise – you can do squats and push ups where you do an interval of squats for 20 seconds, 10 seconds break, push ups for 20 seconds, break etc. for 8 rounds total, so 4 rounds of push ups and 4 rounds of squats. Same as in example 1, the goal is to do the highest number of push ups and squats. Now not only do you have a fun and effective work out but you are working on different muscle groups as well!

Those are just a few examples of how you can combine simple exercise with interval training to get a quick and effective work out. Better yet, no matter how fit you are, interval training will always be effective – it’s just a fit person will have higher numbers. Which makes it one of the very few work out programs that can work well for both unfit people and pro athletes.

You should do a warm up before interval training though (as well as a cool down) and I would also recommend that you get your stamina to a certain level before trying interval training as it does push your heart rate etc up. If you can run for 30 minutes at a moderate you should be good. But do go slow(er) the first time.