Kitchener Personal Trainer

Back in the day there was fitness information floating around, usually in fitness magazines and some online articles that the way to burn fat when doing cardio is to be in the “fat burning zone”. Sometimes you will still see this on cardio machines and you will still see people do this every day at the gym, they are going slow mo on the cardio machine because they think it will target fat.

This has to do with some scientific research on ATP and how aerobic exercise will help you use fat for energy instead of carbohydrates which is your primary source for fuel. I’m not going to get into the science of it all because it will be boring for you, trust me! But that’s the gist of it.

I’m going to tell you now that the fat burning zone doesn’t exist and walking super slow is not the way to burn calories and fat, you would have to walk all day long like that in order to see any fat loss results. So please if you are one of the ones that has fallen prey to this misinformation and you think that by walking or moving slowly at the same pace is going to target fat it’s not, so step off the treadmill and read this first!

The way to burn fat involves two ways. One is resistance training and I mean lifting weights-heavy ones and those best lifts are compound lifts such as Squats, Deadlifts, Leg Press, Lunges, Bench Press, etc. In other words any lift that involves more than one muscle group and crosses more than one joint.

The next way to burn fat like crazy is HIIT workouts. I’m sure you have heard of it by now but it stands for High Intensity Interval Training. These workouts sometimes involve weights and some of them are just cardio based and then some of them are body weight exercises.

High intensity burns calories period. It also burns fat. But when you involve different intensity levels within your workout that’s when the real magic happens. Different levels of intensity at intervals is most effective on subcutaneous fat. It can also increase muscle mass and certainly maintains it.

I’m not saying HIIT is easy but it will most definitely get you results and in less time. Did I mention you can get your entire workout done in 30 minutes or less? No more working out for two hours getting the same results you would in thirty minutes.

  Another really great reason to do high intensity interval training. Comment your thoughts on this type of training.