Burn Fat and Gain Muscle: 3 Strategies That Will Guarantee Your Success
The question arises quite frequently whether you can burn fat and gain muscle at the same time. It can be very difficult. However, it is possible. In fact, you burn fat because you gain muscle. Since muscle burns fat, if you increase the amount of muscle you have the more overall fat you will burn. I am going to reveal to you 3 strategies you can implement today to successfully burn fat and gain muscle.
1. Total Body / Multi-joint Exercises. Using exercises that require the movement of more than one joint at a time makes your body work a lot harder than single joint exercises that isolate muscles. Think of training a movement rather than training a muscle. Very few movements, if any, utilize only one muscle. There are other muscles that stabilize, assist, or contract to help out while the primary movement is being performed. Training movements is a more realistic approach if you want to be strong functionally.
Complex movements will work more muscles and encourage more muscle strength and increased muscle coordination than isolation exercises. They are also more time efficient than isolation.
There’s more…Total body movements will get your heart working to supply blood to the working muscles even better than single joint exercises. Combine 3-4 of these total body exercises and do 30 seconds of each without a break. Take a 1 minute break in between circuits and repeat 2-5 times depending on your fitness level. You will not only increase your muscle mass but will do your heart good.
2. Good Nutrition. Any successful weight loss program must include the right eating habits. Stuffing your body full of packaged, canned, and refined foods is not the most effective way to get your body the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. Fresh, whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, good quality lean proteins, and healthy fats are all necessary for good health. Not to mention, you won’t want to eat as much when you limit your foods to the healthy varieties.
Why is that? Well, fresh fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals as well as fiber. Fiber fills you up and helps to maintain a consistent blood sugar level. When eating refined sugars your insulin levels fluctuate so much that your body goes from high to low and really isn’t sure what to do. Additionally, healthy fats and proteins help you feel satisfied and delay the desire to eat more.
And finally, my favorite strategy…
3. Interval Training. Short bursts of high intensity exercise have been shown to be very effective at burning fat and gaining muscle. When you exercise at a high intensity you challenge your muscles more than with long slow cardio training. During interval training type programs carbohydrates are utilized to feed your muscles. You might say that in order to burn fat and gain muscle you have to burn sugar.
How does that work? High intensity exercise requires a fast turn over of energy. Fat stores cannot usually be converted quickly enough to a usable form of energy during the high intensity exercise bout. A short recovery will allow for some energy to be replaced but not likely all that was used. Once you have completed 6-10 sets of an interval training circuit, you have significantly depleted the stored energy reserves in your muscles known as glycogen.
Now, according to some research studies, you may spend the next 24 hours burning more fat than normal to replace the glycogen stores that were used during your exercise routine. You don’t get the same effect with traditional cardio exercises.
So what’s the next step? To burn fat and gain muscle effectively is possible given the right training program. You must gain muscle to burn fat! A combination of strength training with complex, multi-joint exercises, the right nutrition and interval training for cardio will give you the results you are looking for.
Take action now to ensure your best chances to burn fat and gain muscle by subscribing to the Interval Training Secrets mini course. In it you will discover more strategies to boost your fat burning potential.
Fat Loss Secrets Revealed: Proven Methods to Get Six Pack Abs
Fat Loss Secrets Revealed: Proven Methods to Get Six Pack Abs
by Aaron Ivey ATC, CSCS
Some strategies work better than others for getting rid of belly fat and showing off the six pack abs underneath. Unveiling the six pack doesn’t need to be a complicated or tricky process. However, it seems that it has become more complicated as more and more advice is thrown around without sound science to support it. Here are 3 proven ways to reveal the six pack abs that are waiting to be discovered.
1. Control the diet
The first and most important strategy for gaining a six pack set of abs is to take control over what you put in your body. Nobody will notice the ripped abdominal muscles you have if you cover them up with unwanted fat. Exercise is certainly very important, but if have the strongest and most toned abs ever and nobody can see them, it doesn’t help you look good.
There is a lot of confusion in the diet world right now because so many different programs and opinions are out there about losing weight and what a healthy should consist of. Just pay attention to the headlines of magazines and mainstream media – the newest and greatest method seems to be revealed weekly.
The truth is that a healthy diet is one that comes directly from the ground. It is best to consume whole fruits and vegetables with as little processing as possible. Whole grains are a great source of healthy fiber. Eating good quality meat will give the right types of fat and vitamins in order to produce the hormones and energy that is needed to recover from a workout.
2. Intensity
Focusing on the intensity of the workout is the second most important thing to consider. Workouts should consist of high intensity, short duration exercises with equal rest periods in between. You should also focus on working the whole body rather than isolated muscles. This gives you the most metabolic challenge possible and will therefore stimulate your body to make the changes necessary to become more efficient at burning fat and slimming down.
3. Abdominal training
It may come as no surprise that working your abdominal muscles would be the third component. To train the abdominal muscles correctly and get real results, forget about crunches and situps. These exercises have their place for those that are deconditioned and need a basic way to get started. They are not the most effective abdominal exercise.
Effective abdominal training involves exercises that focus on rotation, stabilization, and deceleration of the trunk. Ideally, if you can combine all three of these into one exercise you will have yourself a great abdominal exercise. Most of the time, if you are performing a whole body exercise, you are also training your abdominal muscles the way they were intended.
Getting rid of excess body fat is going to be the most effective way to show off definition in the abs and midsection. The most effective exercises to burn fat are complex, whole body movements such as swings and snatches, combinations of squats or lunges with a push or pull movement. To look good, focus on these 3 things and you will get the body that you deserve.
interval trainingInterval Training: How Does it Burn Fat?
Interval Training: How Does it Burn Fat? (The Answer Totally Makes Sense)
Traditionally, we have been told by many so called experts that if we wanted to burn fat then we need to train in the “fat burning zone.” According to these experts, training in the fat burning zone is the only way to burn fat when you exercise. Well, they are right. If you want to burn fat during your workout, do some long boring cardio in the fat burning zone. But, if you want to triple the amount of fat that you burn, do interval training workouts. Some basic physiology tells us how interval training burns fat long after you finish your workout.
High intensity interval training exhausts your supply of immediate carbohydrates that are stored in the muscles. This supply is known as glycogen. The phosphocreatine system and the glycolytic system are dependent upon glycogen stored in the muscles and the liver.
Interval training demands energy so quickly that fat stores are not able to provide energy rapidly enough to keep up with demand. Interval training requires carbohydrate stores, glycogen to be specific, to supply the fast energy that is needed. During your recovery period and the hours after your workout when there is plenty of oxygen present and the demand for energy quickly has slowed down, your body utilizes your fat stores to convert that fat into glycogen for the next time you workout with a high intensity. This process of replacing the fast energy stores that you used up during your interval training workout may take hours to completely restore the glycogen stores.
So, the secret to burning fat is to not burn fat during your workout. Burn for hours afterwards by exhausting your glycogen stores.
Fat Burning Bodyweight Circuit Exercises
Fat Burning Bodyweight Circuit Exercises
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Turbulence Training for Fat Loss
When you travel, you worry about missing your workouts and eating poorly…So you must plan ahead for both (apples and almonds for planes, trains, & automobiles)…and bodyweight circuits for “no-equipment fat burning”.
And while I have bodyweight exercises that are just as hard as the bench press and barbell squat in one of my bodyweight workouts, today we’ll focus on replacing intervals with bodyweight circuits.
To do a bodyweight circuit…
a) Pick 3 lower body exercises
b) Pick 3 upper body exercises
c) Alternate between a lower and upper body exercise without rest, till you are done all 6 exercises
d) Rest a minute.
e) Repeat 2-3 more times until you are done 20 minutes
For example, this is a great circuit that doesn’t need any equipment
1) Prisoner Squat (12 repetitions)
2) Elevated Pushups (8 reps per side)
3) Single-Leg Deadlift (10 reps per side)
4) Close-grip Pushups (As many reps as possible)
5) Jumping Jacks (30-60 reps)
6) Cross-Body Mountain Climber (12 reps per side)
Whew. That’s pretty advanced…for a beginner, we’d slow it down like this and take some breaks between exercises…
1) Wall Squat (8 reps)
2) Kneeling Elevated Pushup (5 reps per side)
3) Lying 1-leg Hip Extension (8 reps per side)
4) Plank (30 second hold)
5) Jumping Jacks (5-10 reps)
6) Side Plank (15 second hold per side)
Safe travels, and of course, always check with your doctor before beginning a fat burning bodyweight circuit exercise program.
Advanced Bodyweight Circuit Workout
About the Author
Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training for Fat Loss
Interval Training Burns More Fat, Increases Fitness
Interval training burns fat and improves fitness more quickly than constant but moderately intensive physical activity, according to research by a University of Guelph researcher.
The study included moderately fit women in their 20’s and borderline sedentary subjects. Subjects trained every other day for 2 weeks alternating between 4 minute work periods and 2 minute rest periods for a total of 10 sets. They trained at 90% intensity.
So what were the results?
- Increase in fat usage.
- Increase in aerobic capacity. This means that a person is better able to sustain prolonged activity.
- Increase in muscle enzyme activity. These are the chemicals in the body that help make reactions happen faster. This may help to make the body more efficient at producing energy in the muscles.
The bottom line is that the interval training study demonstrated that this interval training program elicits faster and improved fat burning potential and greater overall fitness. Talanian concludes that the introduction of an interval training program into your exercise routine once or twice a week can be beneficial.
Want to know how to implement an interval training program. My friend Craig Ballantyne is offering a discounted trial period for those who want to fire up their training program. Check it out at Turbulence Training.
This study can be found at:
University Of Guelph (2007, June 29). Interval Training Burns More Fat, Increases Fitness, Study Finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 12, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/06/070627140103.htm
