Fitness From the Pro

We all want to know the miracle fat burning exercises. There isn’t just one fat burning exercise it’s a combination of diet and exercise.

When you think of fat burning exercises you automatically think of cardiovascular workouts. Increasing your heart rate for at least 20-30 minutes can assist in burning fat. Interval bursts of high intensity to lower intensity cardio work will increase your fat burn. When you’re using the machines you have more control over your intervals than you would with a class. However, with a good instructor, they will design the class to alternate from higher intensity to lower intensity. If you are looking for a class with good fat burning, check out cycling, step, aqua aerobics, kick boxing, or boot camp type classes.

Always start with a warm up and always cool down and stretch after your work out. Increasing your intensity can be done in many ways. Increasing the resistance by adjusting the cardio machine to higher levels or change your speed. Some machines even have an interval option. Whatever interval you choose work into a high intensity level for 30 seconds and then back off and recover for a minute or two. Gradually increase the length of time for your intervals and recovery alternating between the levels. Do these cycles for 20 -30 minutes at a minimum.

Watch your heart rate very carefully. If you exceed your maximum heart rate, your body will go into another energy system and could actually start to burn up muscle. Figuring out your maximum heart rate is easy math…subtract your age from 220. For instance, if you take a 40 year old person and subtract from 220, (220-40=180) their maximum heart rate would be 180 bpm. It would be best for you to keep your heart rate below 180. It’s all based on how our bodies use energy. If you wanted to work out at 80% of your max rate, than multiply 180 x .80 (80%)=144bpm. (beats per minute). Now you see the difference…heart rate at 80% is just as effective for burning fat than exercising at 100%.

It’s all the way our body uses the energy it makes. We can be very efficient fat burning machines!