Use whatever label you want, it’s undeniable that everyone has “trouble areas” that oftentimes make weight loss diets and fat loss workouts appear ineffective.

And while myths like “crunches shrink your waist” have been proven inaccurate (or maybe more the result of wishful thinking), it’s hard to deny that fat does seem to melt off certain areas of your body, while stubbornly clinging to other parts.

One of the most difficult aspects of the fitness industry is that the “experts” are divided. One group focuses on what works, and the one that can scientifically prove what’s effective. Ideally, you are able to marry the two. But oftentimes that takes time.

Is It Broscience…Or Results Before Research?

All scientific research needs to be funded. And earning that funding is a long, difficult process. Not to mention, a lot of the cool stuff that you do in the gym would never get funded because most research companies just don’t care about muscle building and fat loss the way the average guy does.

This led to a divide where being pro-research meant accepting an anti-bodybuilding slant on fitness techniques. For example, because it hadn’t been exhaustively concluded that incline pressing worked the clavicular head of your pecs, the very idea was considered foolish; study-dependent coaches maintained that muscles fibers run the entire length from origin to insertion and are activated by single nerves, and, as a result, it was not possible to preferentially recruit specific areas. Of course, that is possible, as every bodybuilder in history has known.

And now, research is clearly showing that some coaches and scientists owe those bodybuilders an apology. In a review paper written years ago, Dr. Jose Antonio began to dispel the misconceptions and demonstrated clearly that you could target areas of specific muscles.

In the time since that paper was published, much more research has emerged, substantiating Antonio’s position, and this is finally working its way into the public eye of the fitness industry, thanks in no small part to a group of fantastic coaches who are doing their best to get the information out there.

One such coach is Bret Contreras, who regularly produces scientific rationalization that explain the best training methods. In a past presentation, Bret said,

“It is now readily apparent in the literature that all muscle groups…contain functional subdivisions which are preferentially activated during different movements…recent research has showed that altering body position such as foot placement …can target different areas of muscles. Bodybuilders were right all along; it just took research some time to catch up to their wisdom. “

Contreras’s assertion makes clear the fact that part of being a scientist is considering all information with a critical but open mind. Just as importantly, before dismissing ideas as true or false, it’s necessary to first evaluate if certain concepts have been proven inaccurate or simply dismissed for lack of evidence. After all, science and research is the basis of determining what to do for diet and training, but you shouldn’t ignore results or blindly deny the validity of what works just because it hasn’t been tested.

That said, being able to target individual muscle–or even different portions of muscles–is not the same as targeted fat loss. Specifically, doing crunches to shrink your stomach won’t melt belly fat and more than doing neck crunches will remove excess skin on your face.

Why? Sohee Lee, a health coach and founder of Sohee Fit, provides a scientific and practical look at why you lose fat from different body parts, and if there’s anything you can do to help with faster fat loss.

Belly Fat and Big Thighs: The Role of Gender and Genetics

Women, in general, tend to have higher levels of body fat than do men (Nielsen et al., 2004). As well, women tend to store body fat in the lower body in the form of peripheral subcutaneous, whereas men tend to store body fat in the abdominal region in the form of visceral fat (Nielsen et al., 2004). This gives women more of a pear shape and men more of an apple shape.

Additionally, when body fat is lost, women lose more femoral FM (Mauriege et al., 1999) while men lose more abdominal fat (Farnsworth et al., 2003), highlighting a sex discrepancy when it comes to regional fat loss (though this goes against my experience working with hundreds of female clients who typically lose body fat in their upper bodies first and lower bodies last, but I digress). The physiological mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not fully understood at this point.

But here’s something that helps clear up the picture: genetics.

I understand that genetics can be a soft spot for many (Okay, I totally did not intend for that to be a pun, but now I see how accidentally clever that was, so I’m sticking with it. Please don’t click away?). I think it’s worth taking some time to at least touch on the topic, though.

Where’d I get my body from?

I got it from my momma.

Kind of. But also from years and years of dedicated strength training and proper nutrition. It doesn’t sound quite as sexy to say that, though, does it?

Bouchard found that the degree of truncal-abdominal subcutaneous fat is determined by a genetic effect of 30% (1993), and Perusse et al. attribute 42% to 56% for subcutaneous fat and abdominal visceral fat, respectively, to heritability.

And of course, there a number of other factors as well that contribute to regional bodyfat distribution, including hormones, exercise, diet, and more.

All of this to say that yes, genetics do play a role in where an individual stores fat on his or her body, and it also appears to largely determine where we lose body fat first and last from (and conversely, where we gain body fat). But it should by no means be used as a scapegoat. [After all, there’s plenty of real life evidence that you can overcome bad genetics.]

“My body looks like this because of my genetics, and there’s nothing I can do about it!” is a poor excuse (and an incorrect one, at that). There’s still a lot that can be done via behavioral intervention to change your physique.

The Illusion of Spot Reduction

Spot enhancement, or physique enhancement, is when you change the shape of your body by building muscle in specific areas. Weightlifters should be very familiar with this concept.

Because unlike body fat, muscle is site-specific (Wakahara et al., 2013).

For example, if you want to give off the illusion of having a smaller waist, then build wider lats by performing more lat-specific movements. If you want rounder, firmer, and/or more muscular glutes, then it would be in your best interest to perform exercises that target the glutes, such as hip thrusts, lunges, Bulgarian split squats, seated abductions, and glute kickbacks.

(Please note that I’m not saying that you should stick exclusively to bodypart splits or strictly to isolation movements. I actually tend to prefer full body or upper/lower splits for most people, though there is certainly a time and a place for other kinds of training programs as well.)

The cool thing about building more muscle all over is that having more muscle mass can actually give off the appearance of looking leaner overall. This applies to women as well, so ladies, don’t be afraid to build muscle. As long as you keep your nutrition in check (and we’ll cover that below), you will not look bulky.

Finally, it’s important not to overlook the three main mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy: mechanical stress, metabolic stress, and muscle damage.

You can thank Dr. Brad Schoenfeld for this discovery a number of years back. We won’t flesh that out too much here, but can read his first original paper on muscle hypertrophy here and you can also find an interview with him on Bret Contreras’s site here.

To learn more about stubborn body fat, read this post for an entire breakdown from Sohee Lee.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Spot Reduction and Stubborn Fat Loss appeared first on Born Fitness.

Now, understand that the world you are looking for does exist. And it’s not hiding in some fitness Eden. It’s the same world you live in, one filled with big box gyms, cardio rooms, CrossFit boxes, mobile fitness apps, swimming pools, rowing stations, stadium steps, and every type of exercise in between.

While different fitness enthusiasts have their preferred method of burning calories (and rightfully so — a world without different opinions would be pretty boring and limit innovation), the reality is that many things work in fitness.

The biggest problem with Tabatas is that people took a great concept (higher intensity, less rest) and destroyed the execution.

The same reason people get frustrated looking for “the answer” in nutrition applies in fitness, too. There is no one answer, and there are many types of exercises that burn calories.

While any type of activity can help you burn fat, certain methods — like weight training — are more efficient than others. And while it’d be easy to tell every person to just lift some damn weights (I do it quite frequently on my blog and on Twitter), there’s one small problem: Some people don’t like lifting weights. In fact, they hate it.

No matter what they do they can’t fall in love with the iron and the challenge of pushing themselves to lift more weight, perform more reps, or do it all in less time. These people are oftentimes written off. They’re told their approach to fitness won’t work, and generally ignored and left as fitness loners.

I hate that. You see, any type of exercise can be turned into a fat burning experience. Fitness shouldn’t be a place just for those who conform. It’s a platform for those with desire to make improvement. And who am I (or anyone else) to insist that fitness must occur on my playground?

While my preference always focuses on resistance training and trying to lift heavy objects, I care much more about helping everyone become active as opposed to convincing people to do things my way. (Dear fitness industry: Please read that sentence again. And then spread the word.)

So for those of you looking for a different approach to fat loss (whether with weights or not) it’s time to take a well-known recipe for fat loss, and apply a modified version to your activity of choice.

The Tabata Method: What We Know

Some of you might have heard of Tabata Protocol. Many view this method as the holy grail of fat loss, and here’s why.

In the mid-1990s Dr. Tabata designed a study where one group of people performed “steady state” cardio for 60 minutes. This is what most people have historically considered fat loss exercise: slug away for 60 minutes at a constant pace, let the elliptical tell you that you burned a ton of calories, and then call it a day.

The other group? They just pedaled on a bike for a pathetic four minutes. (Or as long as it takes you to karaoke to “Living on a Prayer.”)

But it wasn’t any regular four minutes; the participants biked as fast as they could for 20 seconds (max effort), rested for 10 seconds, and then repeated this pattern for eight rounds until time was up.

Sure, 60 minutes of exercise versus four minutes of exercise doesn’t seem like a fair trial. And it wasn’t: The four minutes was superior to the 60 minutes in terms of overall conditioning and fat loss.

And thus began the evolution of high-intensity training and intervals. Push yourself really hard and rest less, and you can burn more fat. The concept is simple, but the execution is one that has still been hard to apply correctly. Until now.

How to Burn Fat Faster (And Why You’re Doing It Wrong)

The biggest problem with Tabatas is that people took a great concept (higher intensity, less rest) and destroyed the execution. If four minutes is great, then eight minutes must be incredible. And if eight minutes is incredible, then 16 minutes must be mind blowing.

Yet, much like many other things in life, sometimes more isn’t better. And in the case of Tabatas, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Remember, the key to Tabatas was the intensity. Push to you maximum output, rest for just enough time to keep that intensity at it’s highest, and then get back to work.

The secret of Tabatas is not just the work-to-rest ratio; it’s the fact that you can push your body to the extreme and experience supreme benefits.

Now, that’s not to say that you can’t do two or three or four rounds of Tabata style workouts. But those additional rounds might have diminishing benefits if your intensity isn’t as high, which is what happens if you maintain a 20-second exercise-to-rest ratio for long periods of time.

By round four, odds are you’ll be moving at an intensity that is far from your max. Or in other words, you take your output from being a sprint to a marathon. And in a marathon, a sprinter won’t win because he or she can’t sustain his or her intensity for the duration needed.

The solution: Manipulate the work rest ratio so that you can squeeze in a longer workouts and maintain higher intensity.

This approach is not Tabatas.

Calling every type of four-minute interval Tabatas is like labeling every type of high intensity training or Olympic lifting as “CrossFit.” (It’s not, so please stop.)

But, it is taking the Tabata concept (high intensity, low rest) and applying it in a way that you can have a short workout (12 to 20 minutes) and push yourself in a way that will deliver great results by maintaining higher intensity.

Designing Your Fat Loss Approach

Creating workouts is a science, but not all plans need to be overly complicated. Here’s a three-step approach that will start you on the right track and familiarize your body with the type of intensity you need to see results. [Note: by the rules established above, this is not the Tabata method.]

Step 1: Choose a form of exercise of your choice.

Note: It must be something that allows you to push at a very high intensity. If you choose to walk, then you must be able to run. If you want to bike, then bike harder. If you’re swimming, swim faster. And if you’re lifting weights, you’re picking a weight that you can lift for about six reps. (For other activities, I think you get the idea.)

Step 2: After a thorough warm-up follow this routine:

• 10 seconds of high intensity work.
• 30 seconds of rest or low intensity work.
• Repeat for 8 rounds (or a total of 4 minutes)

Step 3: Rest one minute and then repeat.

Follow this process for three to four total rounds, or a total of 15 to 20 minutes.

This way, you choose the activity you want, spend enough time to produce real (visible) results, and keep the workouts short enough that time is never an excuse. The result is a workout with enough rest that you can maintain a higher intensity for a longer period of time.

Best of all? You can make progress at any activity, burn fat, and not have to completely sacrifice your schedule to become fit. And while it’s just 15 to 20 minutes, if you push the pace and maintain a high intensity, you’ll be shocked by how much you can transform your body.

Personalize Your Fitness Plan

Want to work one-on-one with a coach to cater a workout plan to your goals, your lifestyle, and your schedule? Now you can. Click here to learn more about Born Fitness coaching

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Tabata Training, Fat Loss, and the Intensity Effect appeared first on Born Fitness.

I have a few rules in life. They range from “never be greedy” to “always take a glance at a dessert menu to make sure you’re not passing on something amazing.”

For the most part, I don’t violate my rules, although sometimes I bend a little. I used to have a rule along the lines of, “don’t trust a trainer who has nicer gym clothes than you have suits.”

That was until I met the sultan of swagger, Rob Sulaver, founder and CEO of Bandana Training. Rob is the kind of guy who might train in a cardigan (rumors that I have yet to confirm), but he’s also built a reputation as one of the better young strength coaches.

It’s rare that you’ll find trainers spending as much time on investing in learning from other trainers as they do building their business. But that’s Rob.

I recently asked him to provide an overview of his approach to metabolic conditioning and strength training, which was a big part of his most recent program, The Super Villain Workout.

Here’s what you can learn about taking your intensity and metabolic workouts to the next level. -AB

A BETTER WAY TO CIRCUIT TRAIN

By: Rob Sulaver of Bandana Training

Most of us have heard of circuit training, which in the simplest sense is a series of exercises done in sequence one-after-the-other with little to no break in between. It’s beautiful. It’s heart-pounding. It’s time-efficient. And it’s incredibly effective.

The biggest problem isn’t with the workouts. It’s trying to adapt them to your gym.

You know the feeling, you try to plan and prepare for your incredible workout, only to roll up to your gym at 6:00pm on a Tuesday and realize that the rest of the universe also decided to crash the party.

Training at 10:30 am? No problem. At high time, good luck trying to commandeer 5 pieces of equipment. Not to mention, most gyms aren’t always designed with circuit training in mind. If the leg press is 2 floors away from the seated row machine, a circuit with the two becomes a vision quest.

Enter complexes.

Complexes are a specific type of circuit training that utilizes one piece of equipment. So simple, right?

So, a dumbbell complex is a series of dumbbell exercises done in sequence, one-after-the-other with little to no break in between.

The best part: you only need one piece of equipment, so you eliminate most of the common hurdles of circuit training. Plus, they’re excellent for a home gym where space is often limited.

Complexes: Why They’re So Effective

The real genius of complexes is trapped in the science. This is an issue of  local vs. systemic fatigue. And understanding the difference could make the game-changer that allows you to start seeing more results from your weekly sweat-fest.

When you do bicep curls, you fatigue your biceps. Even if you push to the extreme, the limiting factor is your bicep.

There are many influences that play into your inability to do another bicep curl, but one of primary concerns is your body’s ability to create energy to keep your muscles working.

[For the science nerds: Lactic acid decreases the pH of our muscle, which inhibits our cells ability to produce energy. Hydrogen ions inhibit calcium binding to troponin (1) and interfere with cross-bridge formation (1).

What the hell does that mean? It means our muscles have less energy and can produce less force which means no more bicep curl. sad face]

Let’s take a breath, put down the physiology studies, and zoom out. To the bench press.

If you were to immediately move on to fatigue your chest, again the limiting factors is your chest.

But once that happens, then you could move on to your lats and glutes, then your quads, and finally your core.

See what’s happening? You end up accumulating all of this local fatigue, from each individual muscle group, which challenges your entire system. While each area becomes fatigued, linked them together builds a systemic process designed for progression and transformation. The workout has become greater than the sum of its parts.

But like anything else, there’s a smart way to program complexes and a dumb way to program them.

How to Design A Workout Complex

Let’s paint in broad strokes, so that you have as much flexibility as needed to build your workout.

1. Generally speaking, you want the exercises to progress from most neurologically demanding to least. For instance, don’t do biceps curls before squats. As you progress through a complex, you accumulate fatigue. No sense doing the hardest exercise when you’re the most fatigued.
2. Safety is worth considering. This is the “don’t-be-an-idiot” clause. You probably don’t want to do a heavy overhead squat as the last exercise in your complex.
3. The workout should flow. What does this mean? Think about movement patterns. Progressing from a deadlift-to-high pull-to front squat-to overhead press not only works different muscles, but also links up the movements without having to drastically change body positions. This reduces your rest time and makes the complex as efficient as possible.
4. Varying rep ranges is important in complexes. You can adjust to account for the discrepancy in strength for different exercises. For example, if you have a dumbbell reverse lunge, a dumbbell overhead press, a dumbbell bent-over row, a dumbbell chest press, and a dumbbell bicep curl, the bicep curl is probably going to be your most difficult lift if you use the same weight. (Think about it; you can squat much more than you can curl.) Now you can obviously switch out dumbbells if you’d like, but you can help keep the weights heavy by adjusting your reps. For example, you might do 10 reverse lunges per side, but only 5 bicep curls.
5. Complexes are not an excuse for poor form. Actually, nothing is an excuse for poor form.

When designing complexes, the only other factor to consider is exercise selection. If you’re doing full-body workouts, even if you’re only pushing hard for 20 minutes, you’ll want to be mindful to not train too many days consecutively. The effectiveness of circuits and complexes are linked to the intensity. So if you can’t train at the highest intensity, then even the best workout design won’t be as effective.

Looking for more training strategies and detailed coaching videos like these? Be sure to check out Rob’s popular resource, The Super Villain Workout. 

[Eds note: Born Fitness makes no money and received no compensation for the mention of this product. We share it because it’s an incredible resource and #BornApproved.]

(1) Fuchs, F., Y. Reddy, and F.N. Briggs. The interaction of cations with calcium binding site of troponin. biotin. biopsy. act 221:407-409. 1970.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post A Better Way to Perform Circuit Training appeared first on Born Fitness.

What you don’t hear enough?

How to make fat loss work for your body. Sure you might know about HIIT or interval training, but both are often abused in a way that stalls progress more than it helps. 

More is not always more, and a big part of adding fat loss finishers is to gradually increase frequency and intensity.

While exercise isn’t rocket science, it still is a science—and one that heavily depends on all of the demands you place on your body. To achieve faster fat loss, any training plan won’t do. A great workout for someone else might not work for you because of genetics, or it could just be that it doesn’t fit with the other stressors in your life.

To help you crack the personalized aspects of fat loss, I turned to Jen Sinkler, author of Lift Weights Faster 2. [Note: I have no affiliate relationship with this product and don’t receive a penny for promotion. Jen’s approach to fat loss works, but more importantly, her programming helps people find the right program for their body.]

This post will not share a new exercise or routines. But it will explain how to find the best workouts for your body (especially if you’re busy and short on time), and that is maybe the most valuable secret there is for transforming your body.

Faster Fat Loss Workouts

By Jen Sinkler

I make no bones about being a fitness eclectic — from competitive powerlifting to lifting weights faster to calisthenics to clubbell yoga, I love mixing up my workouts, testing out the new and novel, and learning from the best and brightest coaches in the biz.

I have no hard-and-fast rules about the best way or only way. There are many roads to fitness and they vary, by and large, from person to person. But I do have one general rule of thumb that I follow wholeheartedly: I train intuitively.

I’m a huge proponent of listening to my body, heeding its signals, and making adjustments to my training. That means some days, I can push hard and feel amazing.

Other times, depending on life stressors — such as increasing lack of sleep, poor nutrition, hard deadlines, or writing a e-book (ahem) — it’s important to pull back a bit (or, in some cases, a lot) on the metabolic-resistance sessions or sprint training that I love so much.

But intuitive training doesn’t only apply on a workout-by-workout basis.

As you learn your body’s natural cycles and its responses to training and other stressors, you may notice longer-term cycles of turn-it-up and dial-it-down. By making cyclical adjustments, you can make the most of your training and maximize them gains.

I’m essentially talking about naturally periodizing your metabolic-resistance sessions, or finishers, just as you might more officially periodize your main strength plan.

Lifting 101: Understanding Periodization

Periodization is a training methodology most commonly applied to strength training that divvies up workouts into week-long, month-long, and year-long cycles.

It’s an up-and-down training “map” that ratchets up the intensity for a chunk of time — generally three to six weeks — and then tones it down.

The point is to get the best results without overstraining, overtraining, and zapping yourself completely (or, for that matter, undertraining and making no progress).

While this concept is usually applied to traditional strength training, there’s no reason it can’t apply to your conditioning workouts, too. In fact, you should fully expect to go through periods of time every three to six weeks when your body needs a break. Don’t ignore that urge — use the opportunity for variety and recovery so you can come back stronger and faster in the next “up” cycle.

What does this look like in practice? For one, it doesn’t have to be anything formal. You don’t have to rigidly schedule your deloads. Instead, it’s about identifying what you’re doing, and how you can adjust your fat loss additions to accelerate results without slowing down your body or needing to spend more time in the gym.

The Fat Loss Matrix: Creating Your Plan

Fat Loss Trick #1: Go Heavy on Heavy

Make your conditioning match your main session in terms of demands placed on the body. You’re looking to tax your body in similar ways on the same day, says Alex Viada, CSCS, founder of the coaching company Complete Human Performance.

If you’re lifting heavy, focus conditioning on short, fast barn-burning sprint sessions or circuits.

The contrast allows your body the best chance to recovering from that stimulus between sessions.

This is in contrast to doing activities that impose vastly different demands — if you’d pair heavy squats with a long, slow bike ride, for example — which may impede speedy recovery.

Fat Loss Trick #2: Less Load Means More Volume

If you’re going lighter that day or doing more bodyweight or calisthenics movements in your strength sessions, then do more bodyweight circuits as finishers.

You’re always balancing two goals—fat loss and recovery. With less total load (read: not taking the “go big or go home” attitude) there’s usually less stress on your body and recovery can be quicker.

That means you don’t want to sacrifice that strategic approach by adding heavier loads for your fat loss finisher. Instead, add in more bodyweight work, but with the techniques that will make the workouts more metabolic.

Fat Loss Trick #3: Watch the Clock

If your main lifts take up a lot of time, do a short finisher with exercises that round out your workout and hit the muscles you’d like to focus on that day.

Doing a full body workout, crush a quick countdown workout of kettlebell swings and squat thrusts (think modified burpee without the pushup). Do 10 reps of both exercises, followed by 9, then 8, and work your way all the way down to 1, resting as little as possible. It doesn’t look like much on paper, but your body will feel different once you’re finished.

Even high-intensity bouts of 10 minutes or less have been shown to deliver crazy good results. This is what most people struggle to understand; up to a certain point, it’s not about how much time you spend in the gym.

Instead, it’s all about your intensity and how much work you can cram into a period of time. For the same reason that slow cardio can slow fat loss, fast cardio can speed the process.

Fat Loss Trick #4: Schedule Your Fat Loss Workouts

I generally recommend doing at least a short conditioning workout two to three times a week — some people do great with four or even five — in addition to following a more traditional strength program.

How do you know what’s right for you? Generally, start on the low end. More is not always more, and a big part of adding fat loss finishers is to gradually increase frequency, assuming that you’re not left exhausted or struggle to recover.

Remember, adding fat loss finishers should improve your overall conditioning and speed your transformation process. But the core of your program is still your main workout. So if those training sessions are struggling, then it’s best to scale back on the number of finishers you do each week.

Fat Loss Trick #5: Establish “Levels” of Difficulty

This one is simple and extremely effective, both from a physical and mental standpoint. Doing one short, one medium, and one long conditioning workout per week, can allow you to easily match up fat loss finishers on days that make sense.

Only have time for 20 minutes one day per week? Consider making that your “long” conditioning workout—but make it all that you do. Twenty minutes will never feel more effective.

Fat Loss Trick #6: Cycle Your Finishers

Do only short conditioning workouts (10 minutes or less) for one week, followed by a medium-length conditioning week (20-ish minutes), and then a week of longer (in the 30-minute-or-above range). Then, repeat the three-week cycle — as long as you feel physically, mentally, and energetically awesome.

What’s The Right Plan for You?

The truth is, the following variables will impact how you respond to fat loss finishers:

• your fitness level
• other activities
• time
• stress
• injuries

All of these will all affect what you can handle. “Too much” and “too little” are relative concepts, not just from person to person but for you, personally, on a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly basis.

However often you lift weights faster, the important thing is to adapt as necessary. Start small and then build big. Try one of the fat loss tricks, add it to your workout, and then test for at least 2 weeks before reassessing. If it’s working, either stick to the plan or add another wrinkle.

Even though lifting weights faster is one of the most effective ways to speed up results, fat loss is not a race.

Push the intensity and be patient, and the results will be worth the process.

READ MORE: 

Why Weights are Better Than Cardio for Fat Loss

Are Toned Arms Genetic? (And Why Arm Workouts for Women are Flawed)

The Abs Workout: How to Transform Your Midsection

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Faster Fat Loss: How to Add Workout Finishers appeared first on Born Fitness.

For men, that 8 to 10 rep range is usually associated with building more muscle. For women, the weight is viewed as not too heavy, but with enough volume to help get that “long and lean” look so many people want.

But if you really want to see results, the key is making sure you hit a wide variety of rep ranges, and even change up your exercises too.

The “best” answer is that the frequency that you change reps ultimately depends on your goals and your performance. If your primary focus is becoming stronger, this will ultimately influence your workout approach. But that doesn’t mean you’ll only do low reps all day and all the time. Assistance work (with moderate reps) and even speed work (with lower weight and higher reps) have both been shown to benefit increases in strength.

What does it all mean? If you have a well designed program, you might not need to change up reps too often to keep seeing results. But completely ignoring rep schemes might also be the reason why you’re constantly finding yourself on plateau island.

In general, you want to change your reps every 4 to 6 weeks. However, there are many exceptions and your workout design will determine how frequently you need to make changes.

There are many ways you can stagger this approach. Let’s say you’re trying to build muscle or just training for general fitness. One approach is very simple: just follow a particular rep range for 4 to 6 weeks (called a linear approach of periodization), and then shift to a new range.

Let’s say you have three rep ranges: low, medium, and high. Your plan could look as follows:

• Week 1-4: Low reps (2-5 per set)
• Week 5-8: Medium reps (6-10 per set)
• Week 9-12: High reps ( 12-15 per set)

If you want to mix things up, you can always follow an undulating pattern, meaning you’re using different rep ranges during each of your workouts.

Research at Arizona  State University found that different repetition ranges in three weekly training sessions (such as 5 reps on Monday, 15 on  Wednesday, and 10 on Friday) led to almost twice as much strength as those who didn’t vary reps.

Creating Your Rep-Changing Workout Plan

Let’s say you workout three days per week. (You can adapt this for any training model, just create different rep ranges that you can mix and match.)

Step 1: You’ll want to create three categories for rep ranges

• Low: 5 reps
• Medium: 10 reps
• High: 15 reps

[If you have more than 3 days, you can create more than three categories or you can simply mix up the 3 ranges over multiple days.]

Step 2: Set up a model that will be easy to replicate over time.

Week 1:

• Monday = ____ reps
• Wednesday = ____reps
• Friday  = ____reps
  

Then replicate the process and shift up what reps you perform on each day. For example, your 4-week plan could look like:

Week 1: 15, 5, and 10 reps

Week 2: 10, 15, and 5 reps

Week 3: 5, 10, and 15 reps

Week 4: 15, 5, and 10 reps

Perform and results should increase, and you’ll have enough variety to keep you moving until you need to adjust to a different approach, such as the “linear” model shown above.

READ MORE: 

Why Your Ab Workouts Don’t Work

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Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post How Often Should I Change Reps? appeared first on Born Fitness.

But I understand that when people think about diets they imagine restrictions, hunger, and lack of results. In that scenario the word diet sucks, just as much as reading 800 articles on “weight loss tips,” “how to lose weight,” or “the best way to lose weight.”

And yet, you still need to eat and find a way that leaves you feeling good, satisfied, energized, and healthy. Instead of suggesting another fad diet, I asked Sohee Lee, author of Reverse Dieting, to tackle the dieting mistakes that give nutrition plans a bad rep in the first place. Avoid these common errors, and odds are you won’t have any more issues with the D-word or your fat loss progress. -AB

The goal is to continue to lose fat while making this journey as easy as possible

Why You Can’t Lose Weight: Where It All Begins

The truth is, dieting is easy – relatively speaking, anyway. At some point, if you starve yourself enough and exercise yourself into the ground, you will lose weight. That much is obvious. The problem is keeping that weight off. And not hating the process. And doing so in a healthy way.

Because if you didn’t notice, the suggestion of starvation and brutal exercise is about as pleasurable as it sounds. Which is why this stat should not surprise you at all: when it comes to quick fix body transformations, up to two-thirds of the weight lost is regained within the first year, and essentially all the weight regained within five.

The typical dieting approach is all wrong. It’s not diets, per se, but how they are followed. And what’s currently believed. Not only do we misunderstand healthy weight (look no farther than the BMI to understand a metric that is wrong as often as it’s right with active people), we don’t understand the healthy process of weight loss.

In your “get into beach season shape now” mentality you completely overlook the fact that drastic measures typically don’t yield sustainable results. Yet you’ll oftentimes reason that you’ll simply “deal with it later” or better yet, convince yourself that you are the sole exception to this trend.

It’s time to face reality. Because it simply doesn’t work that way. Below are the most common dieting myths that may help you drop a few pounds, but ultimately be the reason why you gain them all back.

Diet Mistake #1: The harder it feels, the better it’s working

If you woke up one day and decided you wanted to lose your gut, what would do you do? You might start by throwing out every single remotely delicious food that you have in your kitchen. Your grocery cart all of a sudden transforms from frozen lunches, chips, and candy to chicken, egg whites, and asparagus – never mind the fact that you despise asparagus, but clearly you’re on a mission here.

You feel strong for the first few days as you ride on the wave of your surge of motivation. You’re invincible, you tell yourself. But then the hunger. And then the cravings. They hit you like a ten-ton truck.

And you sit there and you smile to yourself because you think that the struggle must mean that your fat is melting away as you writhe in pain. After all, this is what it takes to be lean, right? Isn’t this what it means to be hardcore?

The truth: Many people assume that diets must necessarily feel hard in order to be successful, but that’s not the case at all. The goal is to continue to lose fat while making this journey as easy as possible. This means eating as much food as you can (both calorically and variety-wise) and doing as little exercise in the gym as you can get away with while still seeing progress.

Don’t swear off your favorite treats for the rest of your life because I can guarantee you that it’ll come back later to bite you. And it’s not going to feel good.

Don’t slash your calories in half because there’s going to come a point when your progress is going to stall. You’ll then be forced to drop your calories further, and you’re really not going to have much wiggle room.

I understand this sounds backwards. This probably goes against everything you’ve been told. We exist in an incredibly black-and-white society in which we either go balls to the wall or we do absolutely nothing at all. We live sedentary lives for many years while not giving a second thought to the food we eat, and then we abruptly try to go from zero to sixty overnight – and we are somehow surprised when we eventually crash and burn.

This approach obviously hasn’t been working for us – just take a look at the nation’s obesity rate. You have to wonder: if the all-or-nothing mindset really were so successful, then we wouldn’t be struggling so much in our fat loss efforts, would we?

Diet Mistake #2: The faster, the better

Along the same lines, we seem to expect quick, immediate results. I guess in a way, we can’t really help it; this is the world that we live in today. Everything is fast – with some even balking that fast food is no longer speedy enough – and overnight delivery has now become the norm (hello, Amazon Prime!).

If we want something, it’s just a click away and it’s all yours. So of course it would make sense, then, that we have the same expectations when it comes to fat loss. For many of you, no amount of progress will probably feel fast enough.

Down two pounds in a week? Bah, obviously something isn’t working.

Five pounds? That’s more like it – but still, you should have dropped more by now.

Eight? Not bad, but again, why not ten?

The truth: I’m really sorry that mainstream media has completely skewed your expectations of fat loss. I promise you that the methods individuals on weight loss shows utilize to achieve those rapid results are nothing short of harrowing.

Barring any health complications, most individuals can expect to drop at a clip of 1 to 2 pounds per week. Leaner folks should expect a slower rate of 0.5 to 1 pound per week since they have less fat to lose, while clinically obese individuals may be okay dropping weight at a slightly faster rate. This is pretty much the norm. Anything faster than that typically is indicative of a loss of muscle mass as well, which is not what we want.

Not only that, but rapid weight loss is typically indicative of extreme measures. And the more extreme the methods employed, the higher the chances of piling the weight back on.

Diet Mistake #3: Placing your faith in diet super foods

I hear there’s a new super food out on the market and it’s flying off the shelves. This is supposed to be the next big thing – the miracle that can burn your fat effortlessly, negate all the calories you’ve consumed, and deliver you results without an ounce of effort on your part. All you have to do is fork over your money and you’ll achieve the body of your dreams.

According to the product, you don’t have to change a thing about your current lifestyle. All you do is sprinkle this powder in your morning coffee and you’ll be good to go. No fuss, no mess. Too easy.

The truth: There is. no. super food.

There is. no. magical potion.

If that really were the case, we’d all be walking around ripped to shreds by now, don’t you think? I hate to break it to you, but you’re going to have to commit to changing your eating and exercise behaviors if you want to see the results that you’re after. No amount of wishing and hoping is going to work for you unless you get off the couch and take action.

That steady diet of junk food you’ve been subsisting on for the past few years? That needs to be replaced. And no, the 20-yard walk from the parking lot to your office building doesn’t count as your workout for the day. You want to drop some fat? Eat more protein and especially more minimally processed foods. Get in your daily veggies. Maybe stop drinking all that soda. You want to step it up a notch? Start hitting the gym for weight training sessions. Learn the heavy compound movements and hit ‘em hard. Strive to get progressively stronger and treat your workouts like a true commitment.

Listen, losing fat is a pretty simple process when you get down to it. But you have to be willing to put in the work. Don’t complain about the results you didn’t get with the work you didn’t do. And don’t expect all of the super foods in the world to be all you need to change how you look.

Remember, eating healthy is not the same as eating for fat loss. You can overdo anything, especially foods that are loaded with calories. (Even if they are “nutritious” calories.)

Diet Mistake #4: Everything you’re doing  is only temporary

Okay, so you’ve been on this dieting thing for a good three months now and you’ve dropped inches all over. You have a whole new wardrobe to accommodate your newer, leaner self and you’re feeling on top of the world.

You’ve made some pretty drastic changes to your lifestyle within that timeframe. You stopped eating out every day of the week, and you now cook most of your meals. You no longer drown everything in butter, and you’ve doubled your protein intake.

In the gym, you’re now a regular. What first started out as two full-body strength training sessions has evolved into a six day body part split, plus six days of steady-state cardio. Frappuccino? No thanks. You’ve got your protein shake handy.

You finally hit your goal – you’re pleased with what you see in the mirror and you’re holding steady at the lowest body fat percentage you can recall – so now it’s time to really relax. You kick your feet up and toss your tub of whey in the trash. You cancel your gym membership and then make a beeline for Panda Express because you totally deserve it. Now that you’re lean, you can finally go back to the way you lived before.

The truth: If you want to maintain the results you’ve worked so hard for, you absolutely cannot go regress to your former lifestyle.

This is the reality that may be difficult to accept: the lifestyle changes you make have to be permanent. But permanent doesn’t mean brutal, awful, and unbearable.

It’s why the steps you take to get to the body you want should be steps you can follow to keep the body you want.

This is why it’s important to commit to just a small, bite-size behavior changes at a time. You want to be able to maintain that new habit over the long-term, and to that end, it should feel doable. Killing yourself in the gym three hours a day? That’s not doable, and it’ll lead to burnout pretty quick. Cutting out your favorite foods for good? Also not sustainable.

Every step of the way, you should be asking yourself: Can I see myself keeping this up a year from now? If the answer is yes, then you’re on the right track. If not, perhaps you should re-assess what you’re doing.

Maybe you’re feeling a lost, however, because you’re happy with the way that you look, but you’re rather fatigued from being in a caloric deficit for so long.

Maybe you’re considering taking a break from the diet so you can focus on building some muscle and eat more food. Maybe you’re tired of working so hard to drop that spare tire, only to have the scale skyrocket over and over again as soon as your diet is over.

If this is the case, then I invite you to consider switching gears to reverse dieting for the time being. By slowly increasing your food intake in controlled quantities, you’ll not only minimize fat gain with the caloric surplus, but you’ll build some muscle and bring your metabolism back up to speed.

You’ll replace your dieting fatigue with high energy. Your smaller portions will be swapped for generous serving sizes. You’ll trade your ho-hum gym sessions for PR after PR.

Your weight doesn’t have to fluctuate from one extreme to the other anymore. That’s a thing of the past – because now you the mistakes and have the ultimate solution to fix your yo-yoing ways.

Struggling with Your Diet?

Don’t guess what’s best for your body. Have a plan created that’s catered to your life and schedule. To learn more and have your personalized program created risk-free, click here.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Dieting Mistakes appeared first on Born Fitness.

Wild Thang Workout:

The 20-Minute, Fat-Crushing Circuit

By Jen Sinkler

Glance around most gyms and you’ll see people taking their exercise quite seriously. Or maybe more appropriately, they take themselves quite seriously. Solemn faces. Averted eyes. And if you like it that way, if the gym is your place to go inward, carry on.

But if you want your training time to feel more like playtime, try incorporating more ground-based movements and crawling patterns, especially with fat-loss workouts.

A bonus perk: Such cross-patterned (opposite-hand, opposite-foot) movements may even build new synapses in the brain, in effect making you smarter when you crawl around like a child. (It might sound crazy, but think about it’s still a basic movement pattern that most of us have abandoned since we were just one-year-old children.)

If you’re not sold on the mental aspect, do it for the muscular endurance you’ll build in your shoulders and upper back.

To be clear, this is not to say you’re cutting out the big weights — not a chance. Build circuits like these into your program one to three times a week. Below, I’ve laid out a quick, effective and enjoyable total-body circuit workout called “The Zoo.” Get ready to escape.

“The Zoo”

Time Allotted: 20 minutes, allowing for rest between circuits

Suggested Equipment: Two dumbbells and the urge to prowl

Instructions: Complete all rounds of each circuit before moving on to the next, working for 30 seconds and resting for 30 seconds. Take additional rest if needed (but try to take it at the bottom of the round).

Double Front Squat

• Assume a racked position with the dumbbells at shoulder height, your forearms vertical under the dumbbells.
• Initiate the squat by pushing your butt backward and bending your knees, keeping your torso upright and supporting the weight with your arms.
• Keep your knees in line with your toes as you lower yourself as far as you are comfortably able.
(If it’s not very far, play with foot position, and try turning your toes slightly outward, but don’t force anything.)
• Again, keeping your knees in line with your feet, return to stand in the starting position and repeat.

Monkey Hustle

• Squat low to the floor, keeping your arms in front of your body.
• Swing both arms over to one side and reach until you can plant your hands firmly on the floor.
• As your hands make contact with the floor, gently leap the same direction, landing softly, feet farther over than your hands.
• Keep traveling laterally, alternating the reach and hop portions of the movement.

Double Romanian Deadlift

• Stand tall and grasp two dumbbells so they hang down in front of you against your thighs.
• Keeping your chest up, hinge at the hips and allow the dumbbells to trail down the front of your legs, keeping them as close to your body as possible.
• When you reach the end of the range of motion — typically felt as a stretch in the hamstrings or a change in back position — reverse the movement and stand up.

Snatch

• Stand tall and place a dumbbell between your feet in front of you so the handle is perpendicular to your feet.
• Keeping your back flat, hinge at the hips and bend your knees until you can reach the dumbbell handle.
• Gripping the dumbbell, explosively extend your hips. Use the power generated by your hip drive to lift the dumbbell. Keep the dumbbell close to your body as it rises, and pull only slightly with your arm.
• As the dumbbell passes your face level, extend and “punch” your arm upward to lock the weight out overhead. The weight should feel weightless for a moment at the top of the movement. If you are pressing out to complete the movement, use a lighter weight or explode more powerfully from the hips.
• Lower the dumbbell with control to the floor, and repeat for the desired number of repetitions before switching sides.

Bear Crawl

• Starting on your hands and knees, rise up onto your toes and tighten your core.
• At the same time, reach forward with your right hand and left foot and then return your hand and foot to the floor.
• Alternate hands and feet, always in opposites, in a crawling pattern for desired distance or time.

Get Better Faster

If you’re looking to amp up your conditioning in other creative but productive ways, check out Jen’s Lift Weights Faster, a complete guide of more than 130 workouts, 225 exercises, a video library, five challenge-workout videos, plus a dynamic warm-up routine. For more info, click HERE.

Jen Sinkler (www.jensinkler.com), RKC, PCC, PM, USAW, is a longtime fitness journalist who writes for national magazines such as Women’s Health and Men’s Health. A former member of the U.S. national women’s rugby team, she currently trains clients at The Movement Minneapolis.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Wild Thang Workout: The 20-Minute, Fat Burning Circuit appeared first on Born Fitness.