Fat Burning Workout Routines

Everyone has her own workout routine, and while we approve of the "workout," the "routine" has us worried. Familiarity might be comfortable, but it's not effective — certainly not when it comes to a sweat session. Doing the same thing over and over lulls your muscles into an I-can-do-this tedium and lessens your calorie burn.

The good news: You don't need to ditch your current workout to see more weight loss success results. You just need to learn how to rev it up. Follow these tips from some of the top trainers around the country for an ultra-efficient workout that zaps more calories and burns more fat.

3-2-1 Workout

Start with 10 minutes of cardio (on any machine). Warm up for two minutes, then work at a pace that keeps you at 75% of your max heart rate (find it by subtracting your age from 220) for seven minutes. Spend the last minute working at a lighter pace.

Now do a circuit of three exercises for 20 reps each. For instance, do squats followed by bench presses and shoulder presses. Then rest 30 seconds. Repeat twice more.

Do interval cardio. For example, warm up for one minute on a treadmill and then sprint for 30-45 seconds, followed by a 45- to 60-second lighter pace. Repeat four to five times and then cool down with a minute of walking.

Do 20 reps of three different exercises, such as incline dumbbell flyes, followed by split squats, and then overhead triceps extensions. Rest 30 seconds.

Repeat the interval cardio.

Finish with four to five core exercises done for about 30 reps each. Rest 30-60 seconds and repeat for two more circuits. Swiss-ball crunches, full situps, or bicycle situps are all fine.

The Biggest Loser Workout

The Biggest Loser was a simple idea for a reality television program. The overweighted peoples were grouped together and foreced them to live together and made them lose weight. Now here is the biggest loser workout to let anyone who wants to lose weight and feel they are part of a hit show. The workouts are a great way to get started.

Plyometric exercise involves quick, powerful movements that improve nervous system function and therefore increase sport performance. Athletes use plyometrics all the time to get better at their sport — basketball and volleyball players practice things like box jumps in order to improve their vertical jump, for example. For sports like baseball, tennis and golf, or even track events like shot put and javelin, competitors use upper-body plyometric moves like throws and explosive push-ups to bring up their game. It's been shown that plyometric exercise can help athletes improve their performance in their sport, but it's definitely not designed as a tool for weight loss.

There are six routines of workouts to choose from. You can mix and match from the following:

Warm-up:
Warm up your body 5 minutes. These are basic stretching moves to get you ready to go.
Low Intensity Cardio:
This is done for 5 minutes. And the workout include some jumping jacks, some kicking and punching, and a lot of core strengthening exercises for the beginner.
High-Intensity Cardio:
The workout is of 20 minutes duration and include a more aggressive cardio routine designed for people who have been working out for at least a month. The moves are quick, and there's a lot more jumping. It's constant motion combined with boxing and kicking moves.
Strength and Sculpt:
This is done for 20 minutes. Use hand weights and a mat or towel to go through a circuit training routine designed to build muscle and sculpt.
Boot Camp:
It's a 20 minutes workout. A combination of cardio and sculpting that can be done with or without hand weights. This is for people who need a quick workout, and do not have time for both a cardio and sculpting routine.
Cool Down:
This is done for 20 minutes. It is a yoga style stretching to get you back to normal after an intense workout.

Workouts to Increase Stamina

Stamina is a measure of the capability to sustain prolonged stressful effort. Gauging your stamina provides valuable insight to your overall physical constitution and power to endure disease, fatigue, and illness.

Because stamina decreases as we age, it is absolutely imperative to work hard and constantly stretch our bandwidth of endurance.

You’re probably wondering if you’ll ever get to a point where you’ll have enough stamina to get through even your easiest workout. Believe it or not, there are exercises that can help increase your stamina and discussed below are just a few that you can do everyday.

If you have access to a stationary bicycle or even a “real” fitness bike, then put it to more use by increasing your mileage, not the intensity. To build stamina you want to ride for distance first, and then for intensity.

Interval training involves short bursts of high intensity activity followed by short cool down periods of low intensity training. For example, a minute of high-knees would be followed by 30 seconds of step touch. Or running 8 mph for three minutes would be followed by a minute of jogging 4 mph, for a short time period. Quick bursts of energy followed by short breaks to catch your breath are a great way to improve your stamina.

You can then alter this schedule to fit your own individual needs and preferences. Also, if you are training solely for the purpose of a long endurance event, you might wish to replace one of the sprint sessions for another long duration session since this is more event specific.

Furthermore, you will have to judge your own recovery abilities and make sure you are not starting to see your performance suffer from day to day because you are trying to do too much.

The Best 'Pump' Workout

Research shows that to get a maximum pump, you must devote your full attention to each major muscle group by training one muscle group entirely in one workout.

This will guarantee the "mind muscle connection," which will help you dedicate your full attention to the muscle group being trained - resulting in the ability to achieve a better pump. Therefore, each major body part gets its own workout.

Lactic acid also plays a key role in getting a maximum pump. Lactic acid is a by-product of carbohydrate metabolism without the assistance of oxygen.

The thing I like about pump workouts, as I like to call them, is that they create the opportunity for variety in training, they are therapeutic, and they prevent overtraining and injury. As I said, the key to building big muscle is lifting heavy, however, as we all know, too much heavy lifting can bring about injury or overtraining. This is the perfect time to cycle your heavy days with pump workouts.

Pump workouts typically involve rep ranges from 8-20 or more reps, short rest periods, and multiple sets for the same muscle group or opposing muscle groups. They can also include advanced training techniques such as:

Drop sets
Burns
Partials
Negatives
Peak contractions
Forced reps

Most bodybuilders and even most exercise physiologists would agree that workouts that produce maximum pump can provide up to 20-25% of the increase in muscle size. This comes from sarcoplasmic and mitochondrial hypertrophy and increased capillarization. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy looks good and is beneficial to bodybuilders, but you do tend to lose it more quickly with de-training.

The pump has virtually nothing to do with increased myofibrillar hypertrophy – the actual fiber growth that’s responsible for 75-80% of the increase in muscle size. That type of fiber growth comes only from heavy training, which produces much less, if any pump.

Maximum Heart Rate During Exercise

Heart rate is the number of heart beats per minute; the times per minute that the heart contracts. Maximum Heart Rate (Max HR) is the highest number of times your heart can contract in one minute. Max HR is the most useful tool to be used in determining training intensities, because it can be individually measured or predicted.

The most accurate way of determining your individual maximum heart rate is to have it clinically tested (usually by treadmill stress testing) by a cardiologist or exercise physiologist. You can also measure it in field conditions supervised by an experienced coach. If you are over the age of 35, overweight, have been sedentary for several years, or have a history of heart disease in your family, clinical testing is recommended.

It has long been accepted as an approximation, that your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) starts out at 220 beats per minute and falls by one beat each year. Therefore, you can calculate your Maximum Heart Rate by deducting your age from 220. So a good estimate of Maximum Heart Rate for a 40 year old is 180 (220-40 (age)) and for a 20 year old is 200 (200-20).

However, the relationship is not perfectly linear and as we age, especially if we maintain a high level of fitness, our Maximum Heart Rate falls by less than one beat each year. A closer approximation is to accept the one year one beat rule until you reach 30. After 30 it is only .5 a beat per year. This may be summarized by the following formula.

Maximum Heart Rate equals:

(Age 30 or below)


220 - age

(Age above 30)


190 - (age-30)/2

For example, at age 50 the Maximum Heart Rate equals: 190-(50-30)/2=180 bpm

Drinking Milk Before Workout

The importance of milk is not understood well enough by most people. Milk is my favorite snack/meal/supplement, and maybe after reading this article it will rank up there on your charts as well. Tolerant to lactose or not, YOU MUST DRINK MILK.

Milk is good to drink both before and after a workout. Before a workout, it provides a simple carbohydrate in an easily digestible form, and after a workout, and research shows that chocolate milk has the optimal ratio of carbohydrates to protein to help refuel recovering muscles. Milk is an extremely nutritious food, but it does not speed up weight loss. The hypothesis was promoted by the dairy industry before it was backed by solid research. Still, everyone needs the calcium, vitamin D, protein, and other nutrients found in milk. Fat-free or 1% fat milk are best because they contain little saturated fat.

First, you need to determine if you are lactose intolerant. If you can tolerate it, go for it!

Please note that if your work out will be intense, then give 1 to 2 hours before you chug that glass of milk. If your workout will exceed an hour, be ready with energy drinks.

Celebrity Inspired Workout Tips

Celebrities are always in the spotlight. As a result, they work hard to look their very best. While you may not be able to afford their red-carpet style, their tips and tricks for staying in shape are no secret. Want Jessica Biel’s toned arms, Halle Berry’s sculpted back and shoulders or Jessica Alba’s lean abs? Learn their key moves to tone target muscles with tips from their trainers, as well as music straight from their workout playlists!

Looking to spice up your workout? Try one of Keri Russell’s favorite ways to keep active and bike to dinner instead of drive, or use a BOSU ball, Christina Hendricks’ go-to way to mix things up at the gym. Cheryl Burke prefers rigorous dancing to shed a few pounds, and if you want to burn calories with minimal effort, but a lot of fun, try Kristen Bell’s trick and just laugh.

For a sure-fire way to tone up, “The Biggest Loser’s” fitness guru Jillian Michaels’ suggests using kettlebells, which incorporate explosive movements, and are core-based, to help make you stronger.

The Trainer: Kathy Kaehler

Celebrity Clients: Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian, Julia Roberts, Denise Richards, Cindy Crawford, Matt Lauer

What’s on Her Playlist:

"A Year Without Rain" -- Selena Gomez & The Scene

"I'm a Fire" -- Donna Summer

"I Will Love Again" -- Lara Fabian

"The Look of Love" -- Nina Simone (Madison Park vs. Lenny B Remix)

"No Air" -- Glee: The Music, Volume 1

"Café Mocha" -- Jesse Cook

"Raise Your Glass" -- Pink

"Off the Chain" -- Selena Gomez & The Scene

"Halo (Gomi Club Remix)" -- Beyoncé

"Rocketeer" -- Far East Movement featuring Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic

Best Time to Do Cardio Exercise

Morning is the best time for Cardio as the carbohydrates are to a minimum at this time.

Another time to perform is after a Weight Training Session as your body has depleted carbs and while cardio will use up body fat for energy. But if you want to do it later in the day just ensure that you do cardio on empty stomach.

The fat burning benefits of doing cardio exercise in a fasted state don’t appear to be anywhere near as significant as most people incorrectly make it out to be. In fact, the more fat you have to lose, the less these benefits exist in the first place.

Which means in many cases, the advantages might not truly be big enough to warrant going out of your way to do these workouts fasted.

At the same time, while this might technically be the best time to do it in terms of weight loss, fasted morning cardio (specifically when done at the moderate to high intensity it usually is) is the worst way to do it in terms of performance (meaning it will be harder for most people if they don’t eat something first) and probably for maintaining muscle while losing fat as well.

Early in the morning before you eat, your levels of muscle and liver glycogen (stored carbohydrates) are low. If you eat dinner at 7 p.m. and you eat breakfast at 7 a.m., that's 12 hours without food. During this 12-hour overnight fast, your levels of glycogen slowly decline to provide glucose for various bodily functions that go on even while you sleep. As a result, you wake up in the morning with depleted glycogen and lower blood sugar - the optimum environment for burning fat instead of carbohydrate. How much more fat you'll burn is uncertain, but some studies have suggested that up to 300% more fat is burned when cardio is done in a fasted, glycogen-depleted state.

Hip Exercises

Hip exercises are the perfect example of this type of less-visible but highly functional focus. The hip flexors in particular are a small muscle group that play a big role in the body. They help to keep the hips in the correct position, and they’re working hard every time you step up a stair, do squats or just get out of a chair. Having strong hip muscles will also help prevent back problems: When the hips are in alignment, the spine is in alignment as well.

Decline sit-up

While you may have always thought of decline sit-ups as stimulating the abdominal muscles, they also call the hip flexors into play. As you lean back past a 180-degree angle, your hip flexors are automatically going to start tensing, preventing the body from falling back completely.

Keep in mind that the hip flexors are generally a much weaker body muscle, so it’s not going to take all that much weight to get them stimulated and progressing. Aim to complete two to three sets of 10-15 reps.

Back Stretches and Exercises

The pelvic tilt gently stretches the lower back.

1. Lie on your back and pull in your stomach so that your pelvis rolls and your lower back moves toward the floor.
2. Roll your pelvis in the opposite direction so that your back moves away from the floor.
3. Do these slowly and deliberately by counting. Count "one" as you move your lower back to the floor. Count "two" as you move into the neutral position. Count "three" as you move your pelvis away from the floor. Count "four" as you move into neutral.

Is Your Cardio A Waste of Time?

As a trainer I here the question all the time. "How long should I do cardio for?".

Its a multipart question. How long you do cardio for depends on the type of cardio your doing, and the level of fitness your at.

There are two basic types of cardio.
1) High intensity cardio
2) Slow steady state cardio

Now, how long to cardio for fat burning can be interpreted in two different ways:

For how many weeks or months (I believe you are not thinking days!!) do I have to do cardio to get in a good shape? Or how long in duration a cardio session should be for effective fat loss.

I’d answer the first question like that: You will do cardio for as long as it takes. You will do it till you reach your goal. It might be 3 months, or it might be 2 years. It all depends on your current shape and your desired final destination. But keep in mind you should be losing not more than 2lb a week. 1lb is ideal. And it should all come from fat and not muscle tissue.

In order to be effective at doing cardio you need to know these basic rules:

You are better off doing cardio in the morning on an empty stomach or any time during the day, after the workout with weights. The reason being only then your glycogen stores (your own carbohydrate stores) will be depleted or at least very low. In this situation your body will resort to using fat for energy.

Bikini Body Training

Interval training is one of the best ways to burn fat. It involves changing the intensity or level at which you are exercising for a couple of minutes during your workout. For instance, during your 30-minute workout, try running (or walking) at your normal pace for three to five minutes, then run (or walk) at a faster pace for three to five minutes, and slow down to your normal pace again. If you’re working out on the step machine in the gym, step at a normal pace for three to five minutes, then take the resistance up for three to five minutes, and so on. Build up the intervals, so with each high intensity burst you’re working harder than the one before.

By working hard for short periods of time and allowing yourself time to recover, you can push yourself harder than if you tried working at a high intensity for an extended period of time. In working yourself harder, you push your muscles, lungs and heart to their capacity, thereby improving your overall fitness level and, consequently, your body’s ability to burn fat.

While you're watching television, stand up and sit down repeatedly during each commercial break until you're tired or the break is over. This is basically a modified squat thrust. Make sure you focus on good form to keep your core engaged and work the abs along with the legs.

Instructions Training:


* Perform cardio after your weights session.
* Focus on technique and move the weights through a complete range of motion.
* Exhale as you lift the weight, and inhale as you lower it again.
* Complete all reps & sets of each compound set and circuit before moving on.
* Rest period between compound sets is 120 seconds.
* Rest period between repeat of circuits is 90 seconds.
* Use a weight that is heavy enough so you can just manage the required number of reps.

Natural Breast Lift Exercises

Many women are looking to enhance the tone, lift and firmness of their breasts through exercise. While some may think that exercise for the chest may actually make the breasts appear smaller, in most cases the opposite is true. As long as there is not a significant weight loss along with the commencement of these breast toning and firming exercises, most women who strengthen their pectoral muscles will notice an increase in firmness and lift, along with a more rounded “perkier” look to their bustline.

3 reasons why you want to do these exercises to improve your posture...

1. Good posture makes you stand taller making you look more confident
2. Good posture makes you look more slimmer & trimmer
3. Good posture automatically gives you a boob lift making your boobs look bigger and more firmer

Stand two-feet away from a wall. Now place your hands together and form a triangle by touching the thumbs and pointer fingers of your hands. Next lower your hands so that they are directly in front of your breasts.

Extend your hands in front of you until they touch the wall. Now lean forward on your toes until your forehead touches the wall. Then, with your hands remaining on the wall, immediately push away from the wall using your arms and upper chest strength, until you are upright again. For optimal results, aim to keep your entire body firm throughout this movement.

Repeat this movement 5-10 times, leaning against the wall and coming upright. You should feel this exercise in your arms and upper chest.

You also can do this exercise :

Stability Ball Dumbbell Presses

Step one

Your back, shoulders and head should all be resting on the stability ball. Your legs should be out in front of you, with your feet flat on the floor.

Step two

Hold the dumbbells close to your chest, knuckles facing the ceiling. Extend your arms toward the ceiling until they're straight. Bring the weights closer together, but try to avoid letting them touch.

Step three

Slowly lower them back to your chest and repeat step two.


To get the most from these breast accentuating moves, ensure that you:

a. Hold your upper body firm and straight during the upward and downward motions; and

b. Practice positioning your hands so that you avoid straining your wrists.

Cardio Workout : Running

The best cardio exercise is simply the one you will do day in and day out consistently. Choose one which you enjoy doing and don't be afraid to mix the exercises up. Running is an excellent cardio exercises because all you need is a pair of quality running shoes. Running burns serious calories. A 145 LB person can easily burn 300 calories in 30 minutes. The downside is, it takes lots of practice and you should watch your knees and ankles for any discomfort or pain.

Running is simple.

You don't need a room full of pricey equipment or to phone in advance for a tee time. Running doesn't even require much skill--nothing could be easier. Naturally, there are tons of rules. Not for the act of running itself, but about the code, largely unspoken, that governs behavior and informs decisions in situations that every runner encounters sooner or later: Did that driver really just cut me off, and am I within my rights to flip him the bird? What do I tell a marathoner lurching along at mile 20 like a zombie in search of brains? Here are some answers to such quandaries. None of these are rules in the USA Track & Field Competition Rules Book, because you won't find rules there on passing gas during a group run. Instead, these are guidelines to make running a little bit happier, healthier, and more fun for everyone. Because the first rule of running is just that: Have fun.

You may even find you feel less pressure and have more fun going short. If your goal race doesn't live up to your dreams, you can try again a few weeks later since you'll need less recovery time. And if what you like most about races is enjoying the carniva-like atmosphere, you can do that more often. There are more races to choose from, the entry fees are lower, and you're rarely at the mercy of a lottery to get in.

So go ahead, reset your goal. With the following six-week training plans, you can adopt a new target distance, ramp up your fitness, and simply enjoy the pleasures of running.

How to Get A Bikini Body

It's summertime again and everyone's hanging out in the latest bikini except for you. If you want to join the crowds but feel like you need to work off those extra pounds, then it is time to get serious about the diet and fitness regime.

Start eating healthy food. Instead of chowing down on chips, replace these by eating fruit. Eat well-balanced meals and healthy snacks. Although you don't have to plan your meals completely, you should make sure you're getting the right amount of nutrients. A good guideline is to eat one third meat, one third fruit and veggies, and one third carbohydrates. Eating more slowly can also help you. When you take your time eating, your brain has more time to realize you're full and you eat less.

When you have only a month to get a bikini body, focus on full-body exercises and interval training. Full-body exercises include push-ups, squats and lunges and pull-ups. These exercises tone your body and help you burn more calories. Not only does interval training burn the most fat, but it helps to boost your metabolism to burn more calories even when not exercising. "After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent and cardiovascular fitness increased by 13 percent," reports Science Daily.

Make space in your schedule for six one-hour workouts weekly. It is important to let your body rest one day a week or you risk over-training, which can result in injury. Also, make sure to watch your calorie intake, as your diet will affect your end result. If you need help with diet, sign up with a weight-control program like Weight Watchers or find a nutritionist to assist you.

To boost the challenge, use light weights where indicated. Include two 45- to 60-minute cardio sessions on your off days and follow a healthy diet, and in just four weeks you'll be sitting poolside with pride.