10 Tips to Workout Less and Lose Weight
Tired of working out harder and longer with little body-changing success? Increase your workout intensity to burn more fat and shape your body leaner and meaner. The more intense your workout, the more fat you will burn---faster!. Quality workouts, and not time spent, are the key to long-term fat loss and weight loss success.
What is workout intensity? Basically this: the higher your heart rate during exercise, the higher the intensity.
You can use a heart rate monitor. This is a very useful tool for beginners. Experienced exercisers will often use a method called "perceived exertion," or how you feel during your workout.Perceived exertion varies from person to person. What feels easy for you may be very difficult for someone else.
Perceived exertion can be measured this way:
a) If you can easily carry on a conversation with no problems breathing, you are not working out very hard.
b) You are exercising at moderate intensity, if your breathing quickens but you are not out of breath and can carry on a conversation. You will usually have a light sweat.
c) You are exercising at high intensity, if you are sweating profusely, breathing heavily and can only say a few words before pausing to catch your breath.
See Top 10 Weight Loss Tips
High intensity workouts will give you maximum fat-burning and heart health benefits in minimum time. You will burn more calories and fat---during and after your workout. Exercise Post-Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) causes your body to burn more calories and fat after a tough workout. Your body has to work harder to get back to its pre-exercise state.
Some of you can break through your fat loss and weight loss plateau by increasing your workout intensity. If you have been doing the same workout at the same pace for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 5 years, your progress has stalled. Your body has the amazing ability to adapt to your workouts and bring your fat loss and weight loss progress to a grinding halt.
So, here are 10 ways to increase your workout intensity and burn more fat:
1. Shorten the rest time between sets. For example, taking little or no rest between weight training exercises ramps up intensity. You could also vary the repetitions. Circuit training and superset training are good examples.
2. Do more strength exercises that work major muscle groups and burn more fat. Exercises like squats, deadlift, walking lunges (pictured below), rows, medicine ball chops, combination exercises and planks will work well.
Strength train your body in all 3 planes of motion. Using strength exercises that require rotations, turning, twisting and side-to-side motions will fit the bill. This will definitely challenge your body more.
3. Shorten your long, boring cardio sessions. A 20-minute sprint interval cardio session will give you more fat-burning and heart-health benefits than a slower 60-minute cardio session.
4. Add more plyometric exercises (jump training) to your workouts. Plyometric exercises are very intense and effective. Examples would be squat jumps, box jumps and lateral cone hops.
5. Do more bodyweight cardio workouts. These workouts give you a dual strength and cardio benefit. Bodyweight workouts are great fat burners.
6. Exercises that require high levels of balance and coordination will increase the intensity. Also, include exercises with your eyes closed to improve limb position sense (proprioception).
7. Unilateral exercises are more intense than bilateral exercises. So, Bulgarian split squats are more intense than two-legged squats. Pictured below are barbell step ups. And, one-armed exercises are more intense than similar two-armed exercises.
8. Do complex strength training. You would superset a power exercise with a biomechanically similar strength exercise. An example would be pairing repeating full-speed squat jumps (pictured below) with barbell squats. The barbell squats would be performed 1-2 minutes after the squat jumps.
This is an advanced training method and should not be performed by those who do not have adequate stabilization strength and muscular strength.
9. Do more full speed strength exercises. Medicine ball, dumbbell and kettlebell exercises are good choices.
10. Quickness and agility exercises, such as ladder drills, help you change up your workout intensity with short bursts to burn fat faster.
Increase the intensity, build more muscle, get leaner and start making progress again with your fat loss and weight loss!
Be sure and download your Free Bodyweight 500 Metabolic Fat Burner Workouts and start shaping your body faster!
What is workout intensity? Basically this: the higher your heart rate during exercise, the higher the intensity.
You can use a heart rate monitor. This is a very useful tool for beginners. Experienced exercisers will often use a method called "perceived exertion," or how you feel during your workout.Perceived exertion varies from person to person. What feels easy for you may be very difficult for someone else.
Perceived exertion can be measured this way:
a) If you can easily carry on a conversation with no problems breathing, you are not working out very hard.
b) You are exercising at moderate intensity, if your breathing quickens but you are not out of breath and can carry on a conversation. You will usually have a light sweat.
c) You are exercising at high intensity, if you are sweating profusely, breathing heavily and can only say a few words before pausing to catch your breath.
See Top 10 Weight Loss Tips
High intensity workouts will give you maximum fat-burning and heart health benefits in minimum time. You will burn more calories and fat---during and after your workout. Exercise Post-Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) causes your body to burn more calories and fat after a tough workout. Your body has to work harder to get back to its pre-exercise state.
Some of you can break through your fat loss and weight loss plateau by increasing your workout intensity. If you have been doing the same workout at the same pace for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or 5 years, your progress has stalled. Your body has the amazing ability to adapt to your workouts and bring your fat loss and weight loss progress to a grinding halt.
So, here are 10 ways to increase your workout intensity and burn more fat:
1. Shorten the rest time between sets. For example, taking little or no rest between weight training exercises ramps up intensity. You could also vary the repetitions. Circuit training and superset training are good examples.
2. Do more strength exercises that work major muscle groups and burn more fat. Exercises like squats, deadlift, walking lunges (pictured below), rows, medicine ball chops, combination exercises and planks will work well.
Strength train your body in all 3 planes of motion. Using strength exercises that require rotations, turning, twisting and side-to-side motions will fit the bill. This will definitely challenge your body more.
3. Shorten your long, boring cardio sessions. A 20-minute sprint interval cardio session will give you more fat-burning and heart-health benefits than a slower 60-minute cardio session.
4. Add more plyometric exercises (jump training) to your workouts. Plyometric exercises are very intense and effective. Examples would be squat jumps, box jumps and lateral cone hops.
5. Do more bodyweight cardio workouts. These workouts give you a dual strength and cardio benefit. Bodyweight workouts are great fat burners.
6. Exercises that require high levels of balance and coordination will increase the intensity. Also, include exercises with your eyes closed to improve limb position sense (proprioception).
7. Unilateral exercises are more intense than bilateral exercises. So, Bulgarian split squats are more intense than two-legged squats. Pictured below are barbell step ups. And, one-armed exercises are more intense than similar two-armed exercises.
8. Do complex strength training. You would superset a power exercise with a biomechanically similar strength exercise. An example would be pairing repeating full-speed squat jumps (pictured below) with barbell squats. The barbell squats would be performed 1-2 minutes after the squat jumps.
This is an advanced training method and should not be performed by those who do not have adequate stabilization strength and muscular strength.
9. Do more full speed strength exercises. Medicine ball, dumbbell and kettlebell exercises are good choices.
10. Quickness and agility exercises, such as ladder drills, help you change up your workout intensity with short bursts to burn fat faster.
Increase the intensity, build more muscle, get leaner and start making progress again with your fat loss and weight loss!
Be sure and download your Free Bodyweight 500 Metabolic Fat Burner Workouts and start shaping your body faster!
