TRAINING FOR FAT LOSS BASICS PART TWO

Discover the best way to exercise if you want to burn fat

DEBT PAID

During intense periods of exercise your lungs can't take in enough oxygen to provide your body with what it needs. This has the effect of creating an 'oxygen debt' within your body.

  Just like any debt, this deficit needs to be repaid. Your body does this by increasing the amount of oxygen it consumes in the hours after your exercise session has finished. This phenomenon is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC "Simply picking up a heavy bar once and then walking away isn't the right approach to take" and this period of increased oxygen intake also increases the rate at which you burn calories (for a more detailed explanation of how EPOC works to burn fat, see the box, right).

  Another benefit of any form of high-intensity exercise is that it causes lactic acid to accumulate in your muscle cells. While this build-up is responsible for the unpleasant feelings of 'muscle burn', elevated levels of this compound - which is a by-product of glucose metabolism ' are thought to lead to an increase in the release of fat-torching growth hormones in the hours following your workout.

 

REST ASSURED  

But while lifting weights is one of the best ways to burn fat, simply picking up a heavy bar once and then walking away isn't the right approach to take. Yes, doing so will eventually make you stronger, but it will have very little effect on your body-fat levels.

  You need to lift weights in a specific way to elicit the desired fat-burning response. For this program that means you need to approach your three weekly weight training sessions in the same manner as you do the Cardio session. That means working hard for a set period and then taking a short rest before lifting again.

  Never giving your body quite enough time to recover is critical to whether your efforts to burn fat will be successful or not. This technique, which really pushes you out of your comfort zone, is known as 'accumulated fatigue' and results in the maximum number of muscle fibers being broken down. It's also responsible for elevating lactic acids in your muscles and forcing your heart and lungs to work really hard. These factors combine to increase lean muscle mass and reduce fat stores to give you a better body.

"Never giving your body quite enough time to recover is critical to whether your efforts to burn fat will be successful"

  
 That's why the workouts on this blog are based around two giant sets of four moves. Taking very little rest between each individual exercise keeps your heart rate high and does the maximum amount of damage for you stick rigidly to the rest periods detailed in each workout table (see p24 for more on workout tables) . The longer you rest between the exercises, the less effective the workout will be and the less likely you are to get the incredible results you want.

 

THE LAST WORD

Even if you do everything right in the gym and perform the workouts perfectly, you'll still fall short of making positive changes to the way you look if you don't stick to this program's eating plan. It may be an old fitness cliché, but like all clichés it's based on more than a little truth : you can't out-train a bad diet.

  Turn to the next artical now to understand how the six-week nutrition plan works and gain all the information you need to succeed.