Burn baby Burn

Summer is a beautiful season. Light of clothes and with longer days, many grow self conscious about their looks (ridiculous, I know, since most of

you’ve been working out all through the year!). Magic diets and even more magical workout programs appear in magazines, blogs, etc.

I hate this trend. I’ll help you loos the weight you don’t want, but believe me, the biggest thing you’ll feel is a sense of accomplishment. Good fat burinning workouts are hard and tough. There’s no magic about them, only sweat. So, if this isn’t what you’re looking for, please click on the next Trainers hate this guy link you come across. Now, If you’re looking to burn fat for the summer, there are 2 key things you’ll have to get in order:

Diet

You can’t beat the dinner table. No matter how hard you try, it’ll always beat you back. So get your diet in order or you won’t be losing weight. Almost every piece of literature I’ve read on this give two main tips:

Have caloric deficit of 10-20% (You’ll need to calculate your basic caloric need for this). You’ll have to burn more than you eat in order to lose weight

Count calories weekly, not daily. It’ll make it easier.

Anyway, I’m not a nutrition expert so I’m not really qualified to help. But here are a couple of links I’ve found helpful.

The Right Way to Lose Fat: What You Eat (Breaking Muscle)

Exercise (insert evil laugh).

Here I will be helping you. How? I’ll workout for you… not! I’ll be offering 2 different approaches that will help lose weight without changing too much of your regular workouts. But please bear in mind. Fatloss is mostly achieved on a meal to meal basis.

The everyday blaster

This is one of the simplest protocols, and it complements your workouts and practices (they do not substitute). We’ll basically grab a compound exercise and practice it every day for a set number of reps. Make sure you make it challenging enough to work, but not as hard enough that you cannot do your regular workouts.

The 300 swings a day. This idea is from Pat Flynn from Chronicles of Strength, so full props to him. The idea is simple. Grab your kettlebell every day and swing it 300 times.

Now if you don’t have a kettlebell, don’t worry: burpees will put a blowtorch to your fat. Build up to 100 burpees a day and you’ll be golden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX60BcsO_wE

Try jumping as high as you can

The finisher

Finishers are a great way to add burners to your strength practice. What’s the best finisher I’ve ever used? The sprint ladder. Sprint ladders are

easy to understand, but do not underestimate them. You’ll need a small stretch of road/land/something

and mark 3 sets of distance (I usually do 30m, 60m and 100m, though the last one seldom looks like a sprint). Now, from the start line, you’ll sprint to your first mark, jog back to the start, sprint to the second mark, jog back to the start, sprint to the last line, and WALK back. Do this either for time or a set number of sets (5 works magic). Make sure you post your hate comments later. I like doing them on a hill.

A more civilized way of doing this (but not as effective nor adrenaline producing) is to do a short density set after your workout. Kb swings, kb snatches, burpees or high rep squats work wonders. You’ll set a timer to 10 minutes and do a set on the top of every minute. Once you can complete all 10 minutes with a given number of reps, add more reps. Try to keep 15 seconds of rest as a minimum (now’s when you add weight ;9)

Closing comments

Losing weight is a challenge best attacked head on. You don’t need to change your strength training to achieve it, in fact, I even discourage it. But it does take hard work and a focused will. This two suggestions will help you get there just remember that it’s mostly on a diet base that weight lose is really achieved. Enjoy and share your progress with us!

Note: following this suggestions may result in the following secondary effects: a higher level of conditioning and feeling of true awesomeness as bonus.

Motus Virtute