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SHOCK Your Body into Burning More Calories in Less Time

By Brad Linder

Want to shock your body into burn more calories in less time? Want better results with less time in your workouts? We all would rather workout for 30-45 minutes instead of 60 minutes to an hour, right? This article will help you get more out of your workout in less amount of time.

How do you do this? By combining resistance training with cardio in to one single workout, your body can burn up to three times more fat than with cardio alone because your body is still burning calories for hours after your workout. Many of us are used to hitting the treadmill, elliptical, bike, pavement, or anything else that may be used to burn off calories. This article will give you three different exercise techniques to help your body burn more calories in less amount of time.

The first step to take to help your body burn more calories in less time would be adding resistance training into your exercise routine.

Simply put, the more lean muscle our bodies have, the more fat we can burn. This means that the more lean muscle your body has, your body will burn more calories in any given day. Performing resistance training or strength helps your body burn more calories around the clock, even when you are sleeping. Doesn't that sound good to you? Incorporating weights, dumbbells, body weight resistance into your workout will also help you lose inches around your body and give you that slender, toned look.

Never done resistance training? I would suggest a few things to help prevent injury and help you learn how to do the exercises properly so that you can get the most out of your workouts.

Investing in a personal trainer would be a great start for anyone who has never performed resistance or strength training. A professional fitness trainer will help teach you how to properly perform each exercise which helps prevent injury and helps burn more calories. The right personal trainer should help teach and educate you about everything that deals with fitness and nutrition. Doing the exercise correctly will help you isolate the exercise more and help shock your body. This will make you body workout harder and cause it to adapt the changes. Thus, your body naturally burns more calories. Find the right one to invest in that will fit with your personality and is in it for you. You can Google search a private personal trainer in your local town and look at their website before picking one.

Another suggestion to learn resistance training and strength training is to find a local fitness boot camp and join. Fitness boot camps are growing throughout the world because it is a great way to get in shape. This will for sure help you shock your body into burning more calories. You would not be the only person joining a fitness boot camp as there are usually 10-30 people in each fitness boot camp. They are growing because it is a fun, dynamic, and new way of getting in shape.

Most of them have a highly qualified certified professional fitness trainer that will help teach you how to perform each exercise. The resistance fitness levels are all different (meaning there are beginner level fitness participants) and you would not be the only one getting started for the first time. The Get You In Shape Fitness Boot Camp would be a great starter for anyone in the Dallas, TX area. Fitness boot camps are also 1/3 of 1/4 of the price of a private personal trainer and you get the group (many of which are your friends who you get to join with you) atmosphere, accountability and motivation.

A third suggestion to learn resistance training and strength training is buy a few fitness DVD's. A fitness DVD will again let you learn from a professional fitness trainer while not having to pay for a private personal trainer or a fitness boot camp.

The last suggestion to learn resistance training and strength training is to get a friend to help get you started. Most of you have a friend that is an exercise junky. They are usually very helpful in helping show off their fitness knowledge. Ask them to help you start a program. This will again help you start on a program that will help minimize injury and maximize results. Get a friend to help you that has experience in resistance training. This will help you stay accountable and motivated as well.

The second step to take to help shock your body and burn more calories in less time would be adding combination exercises to your resistance and strength training. This would be performing a lower body workout along with an upper body exercise will help save you time and also helps your body burn more calories in the process. Your body has to work harder in the process of you performing two different body part movements at once. In turn, it has to burn more calories because it has to work harder. One example of a combination exercise would be doing a squat to press.

The third step to take to help your body burn more calories in less time is to change your resistance routine up. In order to SHOCK our bodies, we need to constantly be changing out workouts up do make our bodies work extra hard (burn more calories) to adapt to the changes. Your body gets used to doing the same workouts and same exercise over and over again. Changing your routine around constantly will help keep your body guessing and making it workout extra hard to adapt to the changes.

Here are some ways to help change your workout routine up:
  1. Alternate between light-weight, moderate intensity, and heavy-weight, high intensity workout. The heavy weight will help your body increase muscle and will also help burn more calories after the workout in order to repair the muscle damage.
  2. Change up the tempo. Tempo is the time it takes to perform the exercise. There are 3 times. One would be the negative or going down time. An example would be the time it takes to go down while performing a squat. The second would be the pause, or when you reach the bottom of the movement. The third time would be the pushing or using force to actually perform the exercise. Many of us just go down as fast as we can, don't pause, and then go up as fast as we can. Changing the tempo up constantly will help shock your body. This will help your muscles work extra hard, which will help your body burn more calories in less time.
  3. Change the routine up. Many people have had the same routine for months or years. Monday through Friday, the same exact exercise routine. It would be wise to constantly change your weekly workout schedule every 3 to 4 weeks. This again, will make your body workout overtime to adapt to all the changes which will help your body burn more calories.
  4. Use light resistance and MOVE! A cardio workout can be greatly increased by just adding light dumbbells into the mix. Doing basic arm movements and leg movements will allow your body to burn more calories in less time because there is more force. Try adding one of those 20 pounds vest and moving for 30 minutes. Most of you know this already, but your body burns more calories when you weight more. So adding some weights into your cardio can indeed help you burn more. This will help boost your heart rate and burn more fat and calories without adding more time to your already crazy schedule!
  5. ADD Interval Training! Interval training has been proven to help your body burn more calories than regular cardio. Interval training is just changing the intensity throughout the cardio workout. I like to keep it simple, so I will explain it simply. I suggest doing 1 minute cycles. One cycle has 3 phases. Phase 1 (minute 1)= light cardio (50% effort) Phase 2 (minute 2)= moderate cardio (70% effort) Phase 3 (minute 3)= high intensity (100% effort). This phase is the KEY to your workout! Push it as hard as you can for the amount of time you have.
Input these changes into your exercise routine and you will be burning more calories in less time!

About the Author:

Brad Linder is the President of Get You In Shape Fitness, a health and fitness company in the Dallas, TX area. His company provides fitness boot camps, personal training, the 40 Day Challenge, nutrition plans, more in the Dallas, TX area. His website is www.GetYouInShape.com