The quickest way to get into the best shape of your life is eating a healthy diet and getting the right exercise. Many people find burning fat to be quite a challenge; even when they’re exercising regularly.
This is often because they are exercising at a lower intensity than their body requires for burning fat. But, there are easy ways to turn up the intensity of the exercises you choose.
Fat Burning Method – Interval Training
Interval training can be a great tool for burning fat and you can do it with any aerobic exercise you’re already doing.
For example, many people like to walk for exercise because it’s something you can do almost anywhere, and it’s something that almost anyone can do. But, to really burn the fat on your next walk, try interspersing short bursts of running.
Even if you can only run for a few seconds, you’ll turn up the calories burned. As your fitness level improves, add more bursts of running, or make them longer. Try interval training for burning fat while cycling, swimming or even dancing.
Fat Burning Method – Superset’s
Superset’s are used in weight training. When you perform superset’s, you simply decrease the rest period between the weight training activities. You move rapidly between each set and each exercise.
This makes your weight training a workout that’s also great for burning fat. An additional benefit is that you finish your workout in a shorter amount of time, so it’s easier to fit into your schedule.
Fat Burning Method – HIIT
HIIT is a very popular term right now. It stands for high intensity interval training, and is very similar to the interval training mentioned above.
Some sports physiologists use HIIT to refer to the training done with athletes, where the number and duration of the intervals, as well as the lower intensity periods are precisely matched to athletic training goals.
But, we can all use hiit for burning fat. It’s simply a matter of turning up the intensity for several short intervals during your aerobic workout.
Fat Burning Method – The Heart Rate Training Zones
When your goal is burning fat, it’s important to know, and stay in, your heart’s target training zone. There are various ways to find out your perfect training zone for burning fat.
The most accurate is to take a stress test to determine your body’s exact maximum heart rate (mhr). But, this can be expensive, and isn’t really an option for most people.
This calculator should give you an accurate prediction of your mhr within 10 beats per minute.
- Males: 210 – 1/2 your age – 1% of your total body weight + 4 = Predicted Maximum Heart Rate
- Females: 210 – 1/2 your age – 1% of your total body weight + 0 = Predicted Maximum Heart Rate
Once you know your mhr, you’ll work at the following levels based on your goals:
- Light intensity – 50-60% of mhr
- Moderate intensity – 60-70% of mhr
- Aerobic – 70-80% of mhr
- Anaerobic – 80-90% of mhr
For burning fat, you want to work mostly in the moderate and aerobic zones, though you need a warm up and cool down at light intensity.
Don’t forget nutrition which is the most important part of any fat burning strategy.
You have mentioned some good fat burning methods. I use most of them when I want to burn as much fat as possible. Another fat burning tip I would mentioned would be to perform your workout first thing in the morning to help maximize fat burning even more.
I would also like to mention a myth concerning doing too much cardio makes you lose muscle. It is maybe true that anyone performing more than an hour every day might have an impact on maintaining your muscle, but in general anyone wanting to build muscle can easy do 3 or 4 hours a week cardio without any impact on their muscle growth or maintenance.