You want to lose fat and actually keep it off?
Stop thinking of your training as a chance to burn more calories.
The benefits of working out for fat loss aren’t in the calories burned during our training sessions.
Training helps us see better results faster through building muscle, improving our movements and increasing our resting metabolic rate.
Because the calories burned from our training sessions are minimal compared to the calories we burn over the course of the day.
That’s why I wanted to share 3 tips to help you get better results from your workouts and see those fat loss results build faster!
To start off – Don’t Repeat Movements Over The Week.
Your workouts don’t need to be boring to get results.
While there are some fundamental movement patterns you want to include in your training, you shouldn’t be so married to only one form of a movement that you only use the same exercise over and over again.
You should include a diversity of movements over the course of your weekly progression but repeat those same workouts for 2-4 weeks at least.
That repetition of the same workouts allows you to see growth in the movements.
But it’s key you include a diversity of movements during the week to create progression through the same but different and avoid your ego getting in the way.
Like including not only the barbell hip thruster but also the single leg foot raised variation as well.
This diversity in the exact form of a movement pattern you include allows you to target and work all aspects of a muscle and in different ways.
It also allows you to use the same movement pattern both as a primary heavy lift and even an accessory move.
You can even change up the types of resistances you use or the exact range of motion and tempos on a movement to drive muscle growth more efficiently over the week.
And this will allow you to see progression each week in these different ways and address any weak links you may have.
If you instead repeated the same barbell back row twice in a week, you may find your ego pushes you to try to lift more each workout, when you can’t.
That second time using the row, your back may be fatigued from previous workouts. So you need to use less weight. But it can be hard to go lighter on the same move you did earlier with more.
By simply even using a single arm dumbbell row as that second row variation in the week, you now won’t force out more weight than you can control AND you’ll get the benefits of a unilateral move.
You’ll allow yourself to use more ways of creating progression to drive muscle growth while keeping your workouts fun and challenging.
You’ll see quicker gains in strength and even feel functionally more fit from your workouts!
The second tip is – Start Global. Go Local.
In other words go big to small.
When you’re looking to include a variety of movement variations over the course of the week, you don’t want to just think about different tools or tempos or postures.
You also want to think about how many muscles and joints are involved in the movement.
Include heavy compound lifts, like the deadlift, but also more isolated movements, especially to target those more stubborn areas, like the bicep curl.
This combination of both types of movements leads to the best muscle gains.
While compound movements are more time-efficient and should be our focus when we have less time to train, isolation exercises help us work a muscle closer to failure to promote optimal growth.
You want to be strategic in how you combine these movements over the course of your workout to get the best results from each type.
Generally, you want to start with big, heavy compound lifts, more global movements before you progress on to smaller, more isolation exercises to work local muscles.
This way you are fresher to maximize those big lifts and lift heavier weights before you push a muscle to full fatigue and create a bigger volume of work with the isolation focus.
Movements like the bench press are a great option to start your training.
Because you are fresh for this lift by including it at the start of your workout, you’ll be able to work more at your true 100% intensity and lift heavier for quality reps.
Exercises that allow you to lift heavier weights build strength which allows you to move more weight not only over the single session but also the weeks and months.
By working from heavier compound lifts toward more accessory moves and isolation exercises, you can fully fatigue the muscles worked during that primary exercise and use all 3 drivers of muscle growth.
With isolation moves, you aren’t focused on low reps and maxing out on loads, but instead of creating more of a pump or burn in the muscles through higher reps with loads that make you want to stop 5 short of where you do.
These weights shouldn’t feel light for the reps you perform even though the loads will be lighter than you may use for a compound exercise.
Moves like the leg extension done later in your workout should fully fatigue your quads after you’ve done other exercises like squats and front lunges earlier on.
Even if you’re short on time or only training 3 times a week, consider adding in a finisher to your workout with an isolation exercise or two to target your stubborn muscle groups!
The third tip is – Don’t Turn Your Strength Workouts Into Cardio
Stop trying just to feel tired and out of breath from your workouts. Don’t just seek to feel the burn every training session.
Too often to burn more calories and feel more worked, we end up turning our strength workouts into cardio sessions.
We cut out all rest. We rush through movements. We add more volume or more reps and sets.
And I know this makes us feel like we’re working harder, which makes us believe we’re going to see better results faster, but ultimately this is what holds us back.
By turning our strength sessions into cardio workouts, we aren’t going to see the muscle growth we want to improve our metabolic health and lose fat faster.
We can even end up losing muscle by doing this and find it harder to keep our nutrition dialed in and our calories in check.
Muscle growth is dependent on a stimulus that challenges the muscle and forces it to grow and adapt.
These sessions may feel hard but they aren’t tearing down your muscle so that it has to regrow stronger.
As you rest less, rush through moves and add more and more volume, your intensity drops.
What “feels” like you giving 100% isn’t a true 100% for very long.
This means you aren’t able to lift as heavy or do the quality repetitions you need to create that progression in your training to create those muscle gains.
And often in making our sessions more cardio, we deplete our glycogen stores more and simply make ourselves hungrier. This can then make it more of a mental battle to keep our nutrition in check!
Don’t cut out rest. Don’t just add in more reps. Slow down your movements even.
But stop seeking to just feel out of breath from your training and like you’re exhausted each and every session.
Realize that resting between rounds so you feel ready to go to work at a true 100% intensity for longer, and even like you’ve EARNED the rest from lifting heavy the round before, is what you need to build that lean muscle!
Be strategic in how you design your workouts to build muscle and help you burn more calories even at rest. This will help you see better fat loss results and maintain them long term.
We have to remember that systems work together to produce results which is why we can’t just randomly string “good moves” that “feel hard” together without a purpose!
For workouts to help you reach your goals, check out my Dynamic Strength program!
