Category Archives: Exercise

Real Training for Real Fat Loss

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Welcome Back!!

Today’s blog is about laying out the facts of how to train for real fat loss. Regular readers will know that I believe you should focus on fat loss, not weight loss. (If you don’t have a copy of my free report on fat loss myths you can get one from the box to the right of this post)

Simply put, after over a decade of my own ups, downs & failures to achieve lasting fat loss I have developed some fairly strong opinions on this issue.

Lots & lots of reading these last 10 or so years...

I have come to hold theses opinions through a combination of educating myself by reading articles, chasing down scientific papers, following an ever changing cast of fitness ‘gurus’ and by trying just about every program there has been. Like famous author Tim Ferriss, I have used myself as guinea pig, and I have arrived at some convictions about fat loss.

The biggest mistake I made and the one I still see the most people making is this belief that low intensity, high volume cardio is the best way to lose fat.

Let me tell you this is a crock – not true at all!!

They have their place, but not the one you've been told!

Short sharp cardio (think Tabata’s or sprints) will burn more fat for longer than hours on a treadmill, a stationary bike, stepper, strider or slider. There is a heap of research out there on this. Trouble is many Personal Training organisations, many medicos and other ‘health’ professionals are either using information from textbooks that were old when they did their degrees or else they are playing politics to gain more mainstream acceptance. Doesn’t really matter – high volume low intensity cardio is a mug’s game. Period.

Second in line is the belief that doing high volumes of circuit training exclusively is the best means of burning fat.

When I first started coming across the research on the effect of high volume circuit training on fat loss I thought that I had found the Holy Grail. The more I looked the more research I found to support this, the more of the Gurus I found who supported this – it seemed like a no-brainer.
Again – this is not right!!

One of the benefits of being your own guinea pig is that you can judge what actually works and what the effects are.

The truth is that no one exercise modality can or should be used exclusively when fat loss is the goal. What you need is a mix of exercise types that hits different energy systems in your body and works to drive your metabolism.

Using circuit training exclusively I found:

1) That the perception of effort was right up there – these were hard & challenging workouts!! So hard in fact, that I started to collect niggling injuries from too many repetitions.

2) This came about from the high volume of exercises were giving my joints, tendons & ligaments a real beating. I developed overuse injuries and these required me to stop & heal – no fat burning happens when you can’t work out!!

Injuries mean no fat loss

3) The type of exercise done in these ‘fat loss’ circuits did not allow for much weight to be used 9nor could it be safely used) so my strength began to drop off. Rapidly. A beginner may have gotten stronger (if they avoided overuse injuries) but anyone with any time using weights just seems to get weaker.

4) A drop in strength and a lack of challenging weight coupled with high volumes = Muscle loss. High volume circuits when used exclusively as a fat loss modality leads to lean tissue loss which leads to a slower metabolism which leads to shifting any fat just gets harder & harder to do.

5) High Volume Circuits also cause physical stress out of proportion to their benefits which increases your levels of cortisol (everyone’s favourite ‘fat to the belly’ stress hormone) and decreases both Growth Hormone & testosterone release. Certainly not what you want for fat loss.
However this does not mean circuits are bad. Nope they just become bad when they are used exclusively for fat loss and other exercise types & protocols are not used.

An effective, metabolic reconditioning program needs to contain most if not all of the following key factors:

1) Lift weights, heavy weights using compound (multi-joint) exercises. Think Deadlifts, chin / pull ups, squats, overhead presses, clean & jerks or even one-armed push ups. Think 4 – 6 reps and no more than 3 or 4 sets.
Not only does this preserve lean tissue, it promotes strength and better fat utilisation as fuel

2) Train fast but safe. In other words perform your exercises as fast as you can whilst maintaining good form. This engages your nervous system and leads to a faster metabolism.

3) Perform some size work – use weights that you can move for 6 – 10 reps and again no more than 4 sets. Again try for compound moves or bodyweight exercises where you are at a mechanical disadvantage. NB these sets should always come after your heavy sets.

4) Circuit training – no more than 3 stations, no more than 15 – 20 reps a time and only 3 – 4 rounds.

5) Sprint. Great for fat loss, great for your legs, do wonders for your cardiovascular & aerobic systems. Best done either later in the day or the day after your weight / circuit training.

Move your body through space - the faster the better!!

So there you have it – the best way to achieve maximum fat loss via exercise.

Give this style of training a try, and see for yourself!

How can you fix a Broken Metabolism? Part 4

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Remember if you are more than 20lbs (10 KG) overweight the chances are your metabolism is slowing and may even, in terms of fat loss, be broken.

In the last post we looked at the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) and how meal timings, meal frequency and the macronutrient composition of meals can be used to positively affect your metabolism.

This brings us to the final strategy that needs to be incorporated into your program in order to recondition your metabolism.

The old saying ‘Move it or Lose it’ is true – humans are designed for movement and as we get older and responsibilities begin to pile up we move less and less. Not only that, but the physical work we get involved in drops off as well. This lessening in physical activity combines with diet, poor food choices and our hormonal environment to slow our metabolism and to increase our body fat.

The good news is that this decline in the physical side of our metabolism can be reversed in short order by exercising the right way.

The right way involves an integrated program that is challenging, has a high metabolic (energy) cost and works both the different muscle types as well as the cardiovascular system. With there being 3 types of muscle in your body – Smooth (such as lines the stomach & oesophagus) skeletal (think Biceps) and cardiac (heart) we need to stress the body in such a way as to do exercise that targets the skeletal & cardiac muscles. The best methods to recondition your metabolism with exercise are a combination of:

  • Weight training
  • Interval training
  • Body Weight training

I have christened this mix of modalities: Integrated Metabolics

In order to recondition your metabolism you need to undertake activities that carry a strong metabolic cost, that disrupt your normal functioning. This metabolic cost is best known as excess post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). The stronger the EPOC we can produce through exercise, the more calories we can burn in the period after we stop exercising. Workout programs that are correctly integrated have been shown to increase metabolism for up to 37 hours after the exercise was completed.

One of the issues with fat loss is that on a calorie & carb restricted program if we are not careful we can lose lean tissue mass as your body begins to break it down for fuel so it can preserve fat for a ‘rainy day.’

In the hormone post we saw that the body has some pretty sophisticated methods of keeping us from starving by preserving body fat. These methods can be traced back a long way from an evolutionary perspective. Likewise with our muscles – humans built muscle for survival reasons, and if your body needed muscle for survival it would not allow it to be broken down. So how can you replicate this conditions that would make your body want to preserve muscle whilst still burning fat?

Lifting weights for sets of 8 –15 reps with a brisk tempo is good for burning calories, but sets with weights heavy enough to force lower reps in the 4-6 range are needed to convince your body to hold onto if not increase its current amount of muscle.

Your muscle is made up of different fibre types and different rep ranges are needed to effectively work these different fibres. Type I skeletal fibres are called ‘slow twitch’ and are good for aerobic exercise, Type II are called fast twitch and are more suited to anaerobic activity. To make it even more confusing Type II are further divided into 3 types. Suffice to say that to obtain maximum metabolic benefit we need to work all types.

So for Type II we need to use multijoint exercises (like Deadlifts, Chin Ups, Rows or Squats) with weights that limit us to 4-6 reps. Then for the subsets of Type II we should move to exercises with reps in the 8-12 range and lastly for Type I we use the 12 -20 rep range. All weight lifting has some cardiac muscle conditioning effects so to an extent we are working 2 of the 3 types of muscle and all the types of muscle fibre.

But to really condition our cardiac muscle and to continue to rebuild our metabolism we need to do more. Enter interval training.

Interval training works because it alternates periods of high intensity with short periods of rest. This combination causes a high level of metabolic disturbance and leads to a strong post work out EPOC whilst ramping up the metabolism & fat burning during the work out itself. The best type of interval training combines short sharp work periods with a longer rest period before the next segment. The best way to get the most out of this is to make the rest periods ‘active’ rest – rope skipping or bench stepping both work well.

So we should finish off with circuits of bodyweight exercises like burpees, squat jumps, push ups, using rope skipping in between circuits as a form of active rest. What we are trying to achieve is a simultaneous burning of calories and boosting of our underlying metabolism so we create a massive metabolic disturbance. The bodyweight exercises chosen should aim at maximum metabolic impact with minimal impact on the already well worked muscles. This way we can avoid too much muscle soreness in subsequent days. This integrated approach results in a strong metabolic cost and very high post-workout EPOC. This combination burns fat whilst rebuilding your metabolism.

This type of Integrated metabolic training is extremely taxing; at some point during this training your body simply cannot handle more of this high intensity work. Because of this you cannot afford to work out like this every day, even every second day is extremely challenging.

Now we bring in the final element – some moderate to low intensity aerobics work on the days between the Integrated Metabolic work outs.

Although aerobic works burns more fat as a percentage of calories during a workout, it still burns less total calories than interval work. So why do it? Simply with EPOC in full swing, fat levels in the blood will be higher and so moderate aerobics can be used to burn it off. So by adding 20 minutes of moderate exercise like a jog, some sprints, bike or stepper you can really raise your level of fat loss.

If this is too much then you can replace the aerobic work with NEPA (Non-Exercise Physical Activity) such as going for a stroll in the evening.

Well there you have it – the end of our 4 part series on reconditioning your metabolism. To work properly it needs a strategic, integrated program that combines diet, food type, hormone manipulation and the right exercise modalities. More on this next time.