Tag: Intervals

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Weight Loss Exercise

Running for Weight Loss Plan: Beginner’s Guide





Running is one of the best workouts for weight loss. It burns more calories per hour than many other forms of exercise, and you don’t even have to spend a lot of money because all you need is a good pair of running shoes. If you are new to running and would like to shed some extra pounds, the following running for weight loss plan will get you off to a good start.

Getting Started – Running for Weight Loss

Walk and Run

Running is a challenging exercise, so it’s important to begin your fitness routine gradually in order to avoid injury. A combination of walking and running will give your body time to adapt to the training while still burning calories. Start with a brisk 10-minute walk to warm up your body and loosen your muscles. Alternate between running for 1 minute and walking for 1 minute for the next 10 minutes. Finish your workout with a 10-minute walk to cool down.

Gradually increase the duration of the runs and shorten the walks until you are able to run consistently for 10 minutes. Finally, begin to shorten your warm-up and cool-down walks so that you will be running longer periods. Run at a pace that allows you to carry on a conversation. Your goal is to be able to run for 30 minutes at a time in order to maximize calorie burn.

Add Mileage



Running for Weight Loss

Running for Weight Loss

The next stage of your weight loss running plan is to run longer distances. You can easily get bored if you run the same distance day in and day out. Gradually increase your total mileage for the week in order to burn more calories each week and achieve your weight-loss goal.

The rate of mileage increase should not exceed 10% per week. This will give your body time to adapt to the workout without suffering from the added stress on your joints and muscles.

Intervals

Interval training is one of the best ways to increase the number of calories burned during your workout. When doing intervals, you alternate between sprinting/running and jogging/walking. Fartlek can also be integrated into your running for weight loss plan. Fartlek is an unstructured form of interval training where you sprint 200-400 meters, then run at your normal pace for recovery.

Vary Your Workouts

Your weight loss running plan should provide variety in your types of workout so as to prevent boredom. In addition to intervals, your workout can include tempo runs or running at a challenging but manageable pace. It’s also a good idea to incorporate long, slow runs at least once a week. Running longer distances allows you to burn more calories and shed extra pounds.


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Weight Loss Exercise

Build Muscle Using Circuit Training



If you want to build muscle using circuit training then you have to know that circuit training  is one of the most time efficient and strenuous types of workouts that you can do, but is very effective for building endurance and mass at the same time, and if you want to lose some fat then this type of workout also can’t be beat.

All circuits are comprised of three components.

  • Exercise movements: free weights, body weight, speed, power, or sport based (such as punching drills).
  • Repetitions: ordinarily in the higher ranges (12-50) to increase lactic build up, but lower and medium rep ranges (or a fusion of all three) are great for weight loss and building muscles.
  • Rest intervals: kept short to stimulate a state which stimulates the output of the male growth hormone and anaerobic fitness.

What to Watch When Circuit Training

Working out more often than not incorporates the initial few warm up drills to get the heartbeat raised, followed by carrying out as many repetitions as you can in a specified time frame (or maybe a determined number of reps) at every station, along with a rest interval of 5-20 seconds between each station, until such time as one particular circuit is carried out. If your muscle training program is not giving you the results you really want, and you are struggling to develop muscle size and definition, you may ought to kick start your progress all over again with circuit training. You could find it tricky to start with, but shortly after that you will have raised your strength and fitness levels above your expectations.

In case you are already experienced with lifting weights, the stimulus from high repetition circuit training is unlikely to be good enough to activate strength increases. Include instability as a substitute for doing exercises using a fixed surface, like the floor or a bench, use an exercise ball to make your body and muscles continue to work harder so as to keep balance.

How to Build Muscle using Circuit Training

Build Muscle Using Circuit Training

Build muscle using circuit training

To boost the potential to build muscle using circuit training, a strength and fitness circuit can be devised. This may be done by introducing exercises from a strength training programme and performing them back-to-back with exercise movements from a calisthenics program. For example, complete a set of dumbbell squats in the 6-15 rep range. End the set 2 or 3 repetitions prior to reaching failure. This is quickly followed by 10-15 reps of step ups. Build muscle using circuit training by constantly overloading your muscles and making sure that you have nothing left at the end of each set.

The secret to a decent figure is excellent muscle development plus low body fat. Make use of the Kettlebell swing to develop your leg muscles and incorporate it in a metabolic resistance training workout this way:

  1. Kettlebell swing
  2. Hip Extensions
  3. Kettlebell swing
  4. One Leg Lying Cable Knee Raise
  5. Kettlebell swing
  6. Dumbbell Pullover
  7. Kettlebell swing
  8. Reverse Grip Smith Machine Bent Over Row
  9. Behind The Back Barbell Shrug

You may need a couple of circuits using sub-maximal weights at the start. Make sure to determine what resistance you can expect to handle following a few loosen up rounds. Because every single movement triggers your body in a different way, you can actually work at a fast tempo. This helps to develop muscle size and definition and get rid of fat. Unlike low intensity cardiovascular exercise that eats up muscle, using weights like this forces your body to pack on muscle mass and to reduce excess adipose (or fat) tissue.

It’s essential to have a record of the weight loads used as well as rest periods. Endeavor to boost intensity each and every training session.On completing every round, take a breather for about 15-40 seconds and after that start another circuit. If you wish to shed extra pounds, shorten rest periods, but still train with big weight loads always.

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Weight Loss Exercise

High Intensity Interval Training Research


High intensity interval training, also known as HIIT, has become immensely popular in the last decade. HIIT involves alternating brief bursts of very high intensity exercise (work intervals) with brief segments of lower intensity exercise (recovery intervals). One problem with some types of HIIT is that they call for such high intensity bursts – literally all out sprints – that they’re not practical for everyone, and possibly not even safe for older or overweight individuals.

A recent study out of McMaster University has tested a protocol for HIIT that produces impressive results in a short period of time without the need for “all-out” sprints…

Many of the previous studies on high intensity interval training used ALL-OUT intervals on a specialized cycle ergometer, pedaling against a high resistance.

Results of High Intensity Interval Training Study

High Intensity Interval Training Research

High Intensity Interval Training

This type of training takes a high level of commitment and motivation and can result in feelings of severe discomfort and even nausea.

One of my colleagues mentioned in our Burn the Fat Forums that he remembers exercise physiology class in college where they did all out cycle ergometer interval sprint testing and nearly everyone either puked or passed out.

The Tabata protocol for example, is a brief but brutal 4 minute HIIT workout often spoken of by trainers and trainees alike with both appreciation and dread. It’s no walk in the park.

The truth is, some high intensity interval training protocols which have been tested in the lab to produce big improvements in cardiovascular function and conditioning in a short period of time, may not be practical or safe, especially for beginners, obese or older adults.

In this new study out of McMaster University, a HIIT protocol that was more practical and attainable for the general population was tested to see how the results would compare to the more “brutal” very short, but extremely intense types of HIIT.

Here’s what the new HIIT protocol looked like:

  • Study duration: 2 weeks
  • Frequency: 3 sessions per week (mon, wed, fri)
  • Work intervals: 60 seconds @ constant load
  • Intensity Work intervals: “high intensity cycling at a workload that corresponded to the peak power achieved at the end of the ramp VO2peak test (355 +/- 10W)”
  • Recovery intervals: 75 seconds
  • Intensity Recovery Intervals: Low intensity cycling at 30W”
  • Rounds: 8-12 intervals
  • Progression: 8 intervals 1st two workouts, 10 intervals second two workouts, 12 intervals last 2 workouts.
  • Warm up: 3 min:
  • Duration of work intervals: 8-12 minutes
  • Total time spent: 21-29 minutes.

Results: In just 2 weeks, there were significant improvements in functional exercise performance and skeletal muscle adaptations (mitochondrial biogenesis). Subjects did not report any dizziness, nausea, light headedness that is often reported with all-out intervals.

They concluded that HIIT does not have to be all-out to produce significant fitness improvements and yet the total weekly time investment could remain under 1 hour.

On a personal note, I REALLY like this kind of interval training: 60 second work intervals repeated 8-12 times. Here’s why:

Body composition was not measured in this study, but I believe that enough energy expenditure can be achieved with 20-30 minutes of this style of interval training to make significant body comp improvements in addition to all the cardiovascular conditioning improvements.

That’s another problem with super-brief and super intense high intensity interval training programs: The cardio and heart benefits are amazing, but you can only burn so many calories per minute, no matter how intensely you work. To call a 4-minute workout a “good fat burner” in the absolute sense is ridiculous.

Somewhere in between long duration slow/moderate steady state cardio and super short super-intense HIIT lies a sweet spot for fat-burning benefits… a place where intensity X duration yield an optimal total calorie expenditure at a reasonable time investment. Perhaps this 20-30 minute HIIT workout is it?

If you’ve read any of my other articles on cardio, you’ll know that I’m not against steady state cardio, walking or even light recreational exercise and miscellaneous activity as part of a fat loss program. All activity counts towards your total daily energy expenditure, and in fact, the little things often add up during the day more than you would imagine (just look up N.E.A.T. and see what you find).

But for your formal “cardio training” sessions, if you’re going to use traditional cardio modes (stationary cycle, etc.) and if your goal includes fat burning, and if your time is limited, then this type of high intensity interval training is a great choice and you can now say it is research proven…

Not to mention… the excuse, “I don’t have enough time” has been officially busted!

Train hard and expect success!

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle