When you think about fat burning workouts, do you picture running/walking on a treadmill or elliptical and exercising for 45-60+ minutes? Well, if you do, you are completely wasting your time!

Long slow distance cardio workouts are ineffective for fat loss(unless your training to be a distance runner/biker), and not to mention extremely boring! So what are the best fat burning workouts for men and women?

Number 1 quit thinking that you have to spend at least an hour or more a day in the gym. I recommend you cut down your fat burning workout program down to only 3 days per week, 45 minutes per session. That’s it!

You are probably saying to yourself, ‘how can I burn fat if I am cutting my workout days & times in half?’ The answer is simple. You need to increase your effort and intensity. You get out of it, what you put into it and ‘it’ is exercise intensity! If you truly want to burn fat, you must stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone!

To build the ideal fat burning workout, you start with movement preparation or a movement based warm-up(NO standing & touching your toes!), followed by a fat torching resistance training supersets and finish with high intensity intervals.

Lets breakdown each component of the fat burning workout. First is the movement based warm-up. You will replace the useless bending over & touching your toes or treadmill warm-up with bodyweight movements like squats, lunges and push-ups. A good example would be to perform 10-12 repetitions of each back to back without rest…a light circuit. This is a better way to prepare your body for the fat burning “supersets” you’ll do next.

You’ll replace your traditional “bodybuilding split(chest/tri’s one day, back/bi’s next…etc)” with a total body, fat burning method called supersets. Pick 2-5 exercises(or more…i do one with 10 exercises), ones that involve multiple joints, and perform them for a short(but intense) amount of time to boost your metabolism and burn belly fat. That’s right, burn fat with strength training! An example would be to do kettlebell or dumbbell clean & jerks, high pulls and stability ball mountain climbers. Set a timer for 30-60 seconds. Repeat each exercise for the selected amount of time without rest. That equals one round. Rest 30-60 seconds and repeat whole circuit 3-5 more times.

Finish off your fat burning training session with high intensity intervals in place of your usual long slow distance cardio. Interval training uses periods of high intensity work followed by low intensity work. This style of training is shown in research to burn more fat in less workout time than “traditional cardio.” Are you saying to yourself ‘why did I buy that treadmill(or elliptical) then?’ Don’t worry you can still use it. Jump on and do 30 seconds of hard running(or fast walking if you can’t run) and then 30-60 seconds of slow jogging(or walking). Repeat 10-12 times. You can also do this outside at the park or track, on the elliptical, the bike or jumping rope. The possibilities are endless!

Training using the principals mentioned above is the ideal way to lose fat and develop a lean body. These workouts are not time consuming and don’t really require an expensive gym membership. Resistance training supersets and high intensity interval training are the proven way to lose weight and burn fat!