Following on from yesterday, we talked about how to improve quality and intensity of your workouts. We said that cutting down on rest periods was important, as well as much effort you give each exercise of course.
Changing your programme around is always good for your body. So let’s say that you are still doing 6-8 exercises with your weight training, but you have probably designed this so that its mostly fairly moderate exercises each workout, then you need to start changing those more moderate exercises into more challenging calorie-burning exercises/movements that will expend more calories per workout and in particular, reduce body fat at a more rapid rate.
For example, lets say you are doing lat pulldowns for your chosen back exercise, then if you change it to one arm dumbbell rowing, then automatically you are going to have a better, more fat burning workout.
This is because each and every exercise as a “metabolic cost”. What this means is that each exercise has an energy cost and takes a certain amount of calories to perform.
The lat pulldown takes less calories and effort than the one arm dumbbell row. So it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that by switching exercises, you will burn more fat and calories per workout.
If you walked the dog at a moderate pace, then swapping that for running at a moderate pace would significantly help you burn more calories and fat per workout.
This step up in intensity is only possible when you have got used to the lighter more moderate exercises and are comfortable with these. Your conditioning levels are very important and these improvements should only be made gradually.
You can increase the workout intensity on any workout plan you have.
Instead of doing steady long runs, try some hill sprints instead.
Don’t get carried away with the fact that you need to increase the time duration all the time in your workout, this is not really true and all we want is results after all isn’t it?!!!!
If you train for 45 minutes at a time for example, then this is around the maximum time you need to be training. If you find this easy, then as we have talked about the last couple of days, you badly need to increase the intensity and effort going into those 45 minutes.
Don’t get carried away with time and I know a lot of very fit individuals I train can get amazing workouts in just 20-25 minutes. Anyone who has trained with me can testify to that!!!
Train hard but make sure you train smart!
