Top Five Tips For Designing Successful Fat Loss Workouts

By Poliquin Group™ Editorial Staff

Strength training will profoundly change your body and life for the better if done properly.

 

Unfortunately, people often make silly mistakes when starting a training program to improve their physique. This can be easily prevented with a few simple but essential guidelines for designing successful fat loss workouts.

 

#1: Design fat loss workouts within the context of a smart diet that leads you to burn more calories than you take in.

 

There’s no mystery as to how to lose body fat and improve your physique. You somehow have to get your body to burn more calories than you eat. Here’s the best way to do this:

 

•    Train in a way that creates a metabolic disturbance and produces a large lactic acid build up. This will build muscle and is associated with an elevated metabolic rate in the post-workout recovery period.

 

•    Support recovery from training and maintain lean muscle by eating a higher protein diet. The more lean mass you have, the more calories your body burns at rest.

 

•    Plan meals around foods that make you satisfied by eating whole protein, fat, and vegetables. This will help you avoid frequent food cravings.

 

•    Be smart about carbohydrates, keeping higher carb foods for after tough workouts that have depleted stored glycogen.

 

Bottom Line: Be consistent and patient. Accept that the successful people are the ones who show up and use their time wisely. Stay the course. Follow the plan. You will get what you desire.

 

#2: Learn proper training technique for the classic multi-joint lifts and prioritize them in your workouts.

 

It’s imperative that you learn how to lift properly so that you overload the body in a way that causes it to adapt as quickly as possible. This is best done by training the classic lifts of squats, deadlifts, lunge variations, presses, rows, chin-ups, and other free weight exercises.

 

Additional benefits include the following:
 
•    You’ll get stronger faster.
•    You can eliminate joint pain linked to faulty movement patterns.
•    You won’t get injured.
•    Most importantly, you won’t look like a bonehead in the gym.

 

Now you might think, well, I don’t know proper training technique so I’ll just do cardio. Although, interval-style cardio can help you lose body fat, in the end it will give you diminishing returns if you don’t lift as well.

 

And using steady-state cardio is simply a bad choice for fat loss because this type of exercise makes your body more efficient at using energy and you lose muscle in the process so you burn fewer calories over the course of the day.

 

Bottom Line: There’s no getting around learning proper technique. Your best option for doing this is to learn from an experienced coach. For this reason, we’ve developed this technique video to show you basic form for some of the most important lifts.

 

#3: Use short rest and sufficient volume so that you get the body to start producing lactic acid.

 

The general rule for strength training for fat loss is to train 4 days a week using moderate loads (65-85 percent of maximal), moderately high volume (8-15 reps, 4-6 sets), and short rest (10-60 seconds). But that leaves a lot of room for guessing.

 

Here are a few guidelines for programming the details:

 

•    Keep workouts at one hour or less. Any longer leads to diminishing returns because the stress hormone cortisol increases to an unfavorably high level, which is not supportive of fat loss.

 

•    Use short rest intervals that allow you to maintain intensity and lifting quality. Short rest intervals result in a large “afterburn” in which your body burns calories at an accelerated rate during the recovery period.

 

The catch is that with too little rest between sets, you’re not able to maintain form and intensity. Therefore, when you’re first starting out, use rest in the 30- to 60-second range. Once you become more advanced and have a decent level of conditioning, you can try shorter rest in the zero to 10-second range.

 

Bottom Line: A lot people go wrong by not training with adequate weight to elicit adaptations.  They simply use weights that are too light for the rep ranges they are training. You should reach failure by the time you reach your last rep. If you haven’t reached failure, increase the weight.

 

#4: Do intervals or strongman training to accelerate fat loss.
If you pair your weight workouts with a smart diet, interval training is not necessary for fat loss, but it can support your goals if you allow for adequate recovery after workouts.

 

For people who are under a lot of stress and not sleeping well, intervals are better avoided (see #5).  Just focus on high quality strength training workouts and nutrition habits that allow you to reduce stress and avoid food cravings.

 

To incorporate intervals into your program, try doing two short sprint-style workouts a week lasting less than 25 minutes. These can be track sprints, bike or rowing intervals, hills, stadium stairs or strongman exercises. Start with submaximal intervals in the 30- to 40-second range. Progress to all-out sprints that last 10- to 30-seconds.

 

Bottom Line: Make sure to train intervals separately from strength workouts to allow you to achieve peak intensity when training and promote recovery. You can do intervals and weights on separate days or do one workout in the morning and another in the afternoon, just make sure this high volume isn’t making your life more stressful.

 

#5: Focus on recovery. It is a primary component of any fat loss training program.

 

Recovery following fat loss workouts should focus on three areas:

 

Get high-quality sleep. A primary goal of fat loss training programs is to produce a large metabolic hormone response, notably growth hormone (GH). At night during deep slow wave sleep is your biggest opportunity for GH production.

 

If you’re not sleeping soundly, you won’t get the GH release. In addition, stress hormones such as cortisol will be elevated. The HPA axis that governs hormone levels will get agitated, adaptations will be compromised, and fat loss will stall.

 

Eat nutrient-dense foods. Focus on eating high-quality animal protein to provide the amino acid building blocks to repair damaged tissue and elevate metabolic rate.

 

In addition, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, favoring dark green veggies and dark-colored fruits, particularly berries because they are packed with antioxidants that have been found to reduce post-workout inflammation and accelerate recovery.

 

Beneficial fats from fish, nuts, seeds, olives, avocado, butter, dairy, eggs, and coconut oil provide vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fats that promote recovery.

 

Use recovery therapies. Evidence-based recovery strategies include doing meditation to lower cortisol, listening to music (it boosts lactate clearance and immune function), and foam rolling or massage (both stimulate receptors on the skin, decreasing sensations of pain).

 

Bottom Line: Recovery and stress reduction have an often under-appreciated impact on fat loss success. You’ll radically improve your results by accounting for all the stress going on in the rest of your life and taking action to reduce it.