Let’s be honest with ourselves. If we want to lose weight we need to try to find ways to burn calories and hopefully burn fat as well. Now it would be ideal if we could burn calories and lose weight by watching television. After all, I am a big sports fan and and I do get rather worked up during certain games, so shouldn’t it be enough to watch others burn calories. Unfortunately, watching sporting events won’t help me lose weight. Maybe it has something to do with the bag of chips sitting to my right.
So the question is what are some good ways to burn calories, lose weight, burn fat or whatever else you want to call it? I have a few suggestions and some of them are a little different. Each one will stoke the fires of your fat burning machine and have you losing weight in no time. That is if you stop eating a bag of chips while you watch a football game.
Plyometrics
Some of you are asking, “What is plyometrics?.” To put it simply it is basically jumping your butt off. And if you have a butt that needs a little reduction then plyometrics is one way to burn calories at a fairly rapid pace. I am not going to go into an extensive discussion of plyometrics in this post. I will reserve that for a future one. But suffice it to say plyometrics will speed up your ability to lose weight.
Plyometrics involves explosive jumps. Often times it involves jumping onto a plyometric box. If you have never done this you don’t know what you are missing. Broad jumps, squat thrusts, side hops are all forms of plyometric exercise. Each will get your heart rate elevated and place you squarely in the fat burning zone. Stay tuned in the near future for an extensive post on plyometrics. However, for now focus on side hops, broad jumps and jumping in place.
Tabata
The Tabata Protocol is an exercise protocol named after Dr. Izumi Tabata of the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. The Tabata protocol is 4 minutes of exercise alternating between short periods of intense exercise and rest. It consists of eight rounds of 20 seconds of exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. This as I said is repeated for 8 rounds. Four minutes later you will be done. You may be asking yourself how tough can that be and how will this type of exercise ever burn calories and help me lose weight? Well, it is amazingly tough. I like to refer to it as a four minute trip into hell.
Now what you are going to do is to take 5 mini trips into hell back to back. Twenty minutes later you will have burned more calories than you can imagine. You can do a variety of exercises in a Tabata fashion but here are some that I would recommend: push-ups, body weight squats, pull-ups, sit-ups, box jumps, jumping in place, dumbbell overhead press, dumbbell curls, and handstand press. You can mix and match them to come up with 5 exercises to work into your Tabata Exercise Protocol. You will be pleased with the weight you lose and the fat that you shed.
Sledgehammer Training
Alright, I know this is an odd fitness tool. If you need to break up some concrete this is good but to exercise with? Swinging a sledgehammer is exhausting. Your heart rate will climb, your will burn calories and ultimately lose weight.
You can stop by a flea market or go to a used tire store in your area and come up with a larger truck tire. Take it home, lay it in your backyard, break out your sledgehammer and go to work on the tire. I would recommend swinging for 1 minute at a time and then taking a 1 minute break. If you cannot swing it for one minute then break the time periods down into more manageable segments.
It does not have to be a 12 lb sledgehammer. Start with a 6 lb one and then work your way up and your are better able to handle it. If you scour yard sales, garage sales, flea markets, etc you can probably come up with a sledgehammer (or should I say calorie burning, fat burning, weight losing fitness equipment) pretty cheap.
Burpees
For my money Burpees are the best fat burning exercise around. If I could only do one exercise for the rest of time then this would be it. It is truly a full body workout. And if you haven’t figured this out yet allow me to let you in on a little secret. Full body workouts burn calories and prompt you to lose weight at an incredibly quick rate. If you are unsure of what a Burpee is then you can view the video below. That is enough said about Burpees. You need to incorporate these into your fat burning workouts. They are a must.
Interval Training
Interval training is a must is you want to lose weight and burn calories at a rapid pace. Interval training has proven itself in studies to be much more effective than “steady state aerobics.” Inteval training is similar to to tabata in that it is a period of high intensity exercise followed by a period of low intensity exercise. An example woud be sprinting for 30 seconds and then walking for 30 - 45 seconds. Then you will repeat the cycle over and over again. In a future post I will go into the science behind the effectiveness of interval training. But for now understand that you need to incorporate it into your workouts if you hope to burn fat, burn calories and lose weight.
If you work all five of these ideas into your fitness program it will have a dramatic effect on your health and your weight loss. Try them out. But as always, (especially due to the high intensity nature of the suggestions above) seek out your doctors approval.
