The Most Effective Weight Loss Workout
Before I dive into the workout side I want to educate you on why this workout will be effective and why you need to implement this.
You want to lose weight right? You try all these high intensity workouts at home, you do long bouts of cardio yet still no results? Or if you do have results they are hard to keep right? Now in no way am I hating on these types of exercise, they are good and can get great results. However continual weight loss is very hard to sustain whilst performing these. Let me explain it like this:
You buy a car with a small engine, its not very fast or big so its fuel efficient, your friend buys a car with a big engine and it is fast as well as big. Which car is going to burn more calories? Your friends with a bigger engine right, the same principle applies with our bodies, if you are someone who has very little muscle mass you will be more fuel efficient compared to someone with more muscle mass. The more muscle mass you have the more calories you will burn everyday, therefor making it easier to sustain your new leaner weight. Imagine that burning calories while you sit down, sleep and even eat, how awesome is that!! Cardio workouts do not build muscle all over.
The great thing is you don’t need to look huge or like a body builder to get this affect as muscle weighs more than fat. You take two people who weigh the same one with excess weight and one lean and more muscular, the one with muscle will look smaller than the one with excess weight. For you men and women who don’t want to get “Too Muscular” don’t worry you won’t, it takes years and years of strict dieting and training along with a calorie surplus to add muscle. Unless you are incredibly genetically gifted you wont gain too much muscle but you will gain a stronger, leaner and healthier looking body.
Now this workout or any workout is not going to help you lose weight if you are eating processed crap and eating too much food. You need to be in a calorie deficit and eating healthy 85% of the time, if you eat 3 meals a day thats 21 meals a week, 85% of this is 17.85 so let say 18 meals. That means you can have 3 meals where you eat slightly off plan, you will still get awesome results as long as you stay in that calorie deficit.
Now lets jump into the workout you should perform to increase and maintain your muscle mass and make your body a fat burning machine.
Perform the following routine 3x per week for the best results.
Exercises:
Barbell Squats - 4 Sets of 8-12 Reps
Barbell Hip Thrusts - 4 Sets of 8-12 Reps
Push Press - 4 sets of 8-12 Reps
Pull Ups - 4 Sets of 8-12 Reps
5a) Dumbbell Chest Press 3 Sets of 8-10 Reps
5b) Plank - 3 Sets of 60 Seconds
6) 10-15 Minutes of HIIT to Finish
Keep the rest time fairly short in-between sets to keep your heart rate up and make the workout more difficult. Aim for 90-60 seconds between sets to start, once you become fitter try and bring this down to 45 seconds.
This is a full body workout targeting as many muscles as possible in one session, this makes it more difficult on the body so you burn more calories. Full body sessions are also ideal for quicker recovery due to spreading the load across the body not just one muscle group. You will also retain more muscle mass due to the muscle being worked more than once per week.
Note: there are plenty of effective ways to burn fat this is not the only workout but understand you need to retain and build muscle mass and the best way to do this is with strength training with weights. The best plan is also the one you enjoy the most and I am yet to meet someone who prefers running for an hour on a treadmill over training with weights.
Focus on form over weight, doing anything to get a heavy weight up will not build as much muscle mass and increase your risk of injury, compared to executing the right technique and muscles with less weight.
Thank you for reading, Train safe :)