What is the Best Fat Burning Exercise?

When looking to shed those excess pounds people generally turn to cardio activity as their main fat burning exercise. This means lots of running, cycling, walking or on the rowing machine and cross trainer in the gym.

Well according to recent research and my own experience as a Personal Trainer an over reliance on cardio training can actually have negative effects on your fat burning efforts.

This is because excessive cardio training can result in a loss of lean muscle mass resulting in a lower metabolism and if you have a lower metabolism you will be burning less fat.

This can cause the syndrome of “thin fat” people who are small in size but having no muscle tone and a low metabolic rate therefore making them very vulnerable to rapid weight gain should they stop training and begin eating normally again.

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Secondly when doing low to moderate intensity cardio training your metabolic rate is only elevated for maybe 1-3 hours after you have finished your session so your capacity to burn fat in the “afterburn” of exercise is very limited.

So with these points in mind it now seems that the best fat burning exercise are the ones that build lean muscle and are performed at a higher intensity to create a much stronger and longer fat stripping post exercise metabolic state. This means including lots of free weight and bodyweight exercises in your fat burning program.

However not all these type of exercises are suitable for fat burning and your focus should be multi joint movements that use many different muscles in the body thereby increasing the amount of energy used and increasing the level of intensity of the training.

The main exercises you should perform on a regular basis are:

Squats – Perform various types using free weight dumbbells and Barbells (No Machines!)

Deadlifts – Again to be performed with Dumbbells and Barbells

Chest and Shoulder Presses – No Machines if possible

Push ups- Use varying techniques to increase the difficulty

Pullups - Very difficult for most people only perform if you can do full range of movement. If you cannot do this exercise then use lat Pulldowns

Lunges – Vary between front, reverse and side.

Rows – Bent over Rows and cable rows

There are lots of variations of these exercises and I would recommend you research further to get more ideas.

When performing these as fat burning exercise you do need to focus keeping the intensity of your workout high. This means using relatively heavy weights ( weights you can perform between 6-10 reps ) and keeping rest rates between sets under less than 60 seconds so the heart rate is elevated throughout the workout.

I also recommend incorporating training techniques such as super sets where you go from one exercise straight to another then rest. This would be one set.

An example of this would be doing 8 reps of deadlifts then performing 8 reps incline chest presses straight away. This does work better if you use opposing muscle groups in your exercise choices.

So if you are getting bored doing the same old cardio routine then I strongly recommend you introduce regular free weight workouts into your weekly regime, I guarantee you will not be disappointed with the results.