Burning fat and losing weight is easy, if you know how.
If you want to maximize fat loss and transform your physique in a matter of days, the same old resistance training you normally do to gain mass or strength just won’t cut it. By altering your workouts and making them more metabolic, you can drastically increase several key fat burning mechanisms, these include:
- Increase calorie burn within the gym (key component in weight loss).
- Increase calorie burn for up to 48 hours after the session.
- Improve nutrient partitioning due to GLUT 4 receptors within the muscle, allowing you to utilize carbohydrates more efficiently into the muscle and not storing fat.
- Increase in Fat Burning Hormones, such as Ephedrine (Adrenaline),
- Increase in Growth Hormone, another potent fat burner,
- Decrease in Muscle Gylcogen, which can increase mitochondria function (the engine in your cells that burns food for fuel) and AMPK levels, a key enzyme in fat metabolism.
- Increase workout volume, which can help you retain muscle mass during a diet.
As you can see, this is the perfect storm for anyone trying to drop fat fast. Compared to normal workouts, you can probably DOUBLE the amount of fat you could burn when using this style of training. Remember, when dieting, you only have a small window to reduce calories by, take them to low and you will lose both muscle and strength. Therefore, once you’ve dropped your calories by say 500 – 800, the only other option sensible option you have is to increase calorie expenditure. This is where metabolic workouts come in, as they can help you double the calories burnt per session, meaning you don’t need to spend hours on a treadmill or dieting for weeks on end.
When embarking on a more metabolic, fat burning workout there are a few considerations. Firstly, you should always prioritize your goals, you can’t achieve everything at once, so understand that the goal here is rapid fat loss with muscle mass and strength retention. Trying to optimize all 3 at once will just end with sub-optimal results all round.
For set up, there a few guidelines you should follow when structuring these workouts. By following these key guidelines, you can guarantee maximal fat loss and calorie expenditure.
These key variables include:
- High Volume, to burn more calories, decrease glycogen, increase fat burning hormones and protect muscle.
- High Frequency, to get more workouts in per week and again, to protect muscle.
- Short Rest Periods, to get more total work per session, increase lactate levels, growth hormone and other fat burning enzymes and hormones such as AMPK.
- Compound Exercises: Isolate movements are great and can still be included, but, your going to burn way more calories doing bench, squat, deadlift etc than set upon set of bicep curls. Remember, theres a time and a place to isolate and overload a lagging muscle, the goal here is maximal fat loss!
- High Reps: While lower rep work is key for strength and central nervous system adaptations, 3-5 reps isn’t going to burn fat like 10 – 20 reps would.
- Multiple Muscle Groups: As you are doing high volume work you should spread this out over several muscles and not just isolate one. This way, you will increase all the fat burning hormones and burn more calories, plus, 30 sets on chest may not work out so great.
- Dropsets, Supersets & Giant Sets; All these advanced training techniques can help you cram in more volume, increase calorie burn and fat loss when you pair exercises back to back or do continued sets.
- Add in DTP: Much like the above, this type of training is a perfect, high rep, highly metabolic fat burning technique to add into your routines.
There are no “set” workouts, simply apply these key points above and start making some mixed routines. Here is an example giant set lower body workout to get you started:
Block 1:
10x Squat
15x Dumbbell Stiff Leg Deadlift
30 seconds Heavy Farmers Walk
Rest 90 seconds and repeat 3 times (4 sets total).
Block 2:
30x Walking DB Lunges (15 on each leg)
15x Seated Hamstring Curls
20 seconds Heavy Prowler Walking Push
Rest 90 seconds and repeat 3 times (4 sets total).
Block 3:
10 / 10 / 15x Leg Press (dropset)
15x Glute Hip Extensions / Bridges
15x Back Extensions
Rest 90 seconds and repeat 3 times (4 sets total).
To finish, you can add in some extra interval training or steady state cardio if you still have the energy.
