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Interval workouts to blast fat

by | Nov 10, 2014 | Personal Training

Are you slacking on your cardio workout? Do you find it hard to motivate yourself to get through it? I find that a lot of people complain about cardio because it is “boring”. They just can’t imagine putting themselves through another snooze fest session. I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be so boring!

I used to run all the time, I did about 5 days a week at one point and I would continuously do the same time and distance. After awhile, I got bored of course.  I also found that I was hitting a plateau, I wasn’t losing fat any more and wasn’t becoming a faster runner.  You wouldn’t perform the same weight training routine for months would you? Of course not.  So don’t do the same with cardio. The key is to mix it up and keep it intense! I often see people watching Tv shows while pedalling away on the stationary bike, you can’t possibly be working that hard if you are doing that.

If your goal is to lose fat, interval, hill, and circuit training is the way to go. By incorporating short periods of intense work following by short recovery time your body will be burning fat after you workout. What happens is your body simply cannot bring enough oxygen during these periods of hard work, therefore you accumulate a “debt “of oxygen that must be repaid post workout. This translates into an increase for your metabolism!

Here are 3  fat-blasting interval workouts you should try

1)       Tabata workout – 20 minutes (HIIT) – high intensity interval training based program working for 20 seconds at all out effort followed by 10 second rest. Start with performing 8 rounds of the exercise given which will be a total of 4 minutes long. The idea is to get up to 20 minutes.  If you can’t finish eight rounds of each  perform  6 or 4 and do your best.

  • Body weight squats – 8 rounds of 20 seconds with 10 second rest
  • Push ups – 8 rounds with 20 seconds with 10 second rest
  • Jumping  lunges – 8 rounds with 20 second with 10 second rest
  • mountain climbers – 8 rounds with 20 second with 10 second rest 

2)      Full body Circuit  workout – repeat 3 to 4 x 

  • Jump rope – 30 seconds
  •  plank – 30 seconds
  • burpees – 30 seconds
  •  lateral side hops – 30 seconds
  • Push up to plank – 30 second
  • crunches on ball-  30 seconds
  • Step ups on bench – 30 seconds
  • wide push ups – 30 seconds
  • Incline treadmill run at 6%  – 1 minute 

3)      Sprint and hill training  workout (repeat 3-5 x depending on level of conditioning)

  • 1 minute sprint
  • 60 seconds recovery
  • 1 min sprint at 3% incline
  • 60 second recovery
  • 1 min sprint at 6 % incline
  • 60 second recovery
  • 1 min sprint at 9% incline
  • 60 second recovery
  • 1 min sprint at 12 % incline
  • 60 second recovery