Types of workout

Warm up

Cardio: Also known as aerobic exercise, it is light-to-moderate intensity activities that raise your heart rate. The intensity should be 60% to 85% of the maximum heart rate. Cardio exercises include dancing, jogging, swimming, cycling, and walking.

Resistance training: also known as strength training. It is a type of physical exercise performed to induce muscular contraction to increase the strength and mass of muscles, strengthen bones, and boost metabolism. Resistance training includes power yoga, bodybuilding, weight lifting, and Pilates.

The most popular fat-burning workout is to combine cardio and resistance training.

Tips to burn fat faster

  1. A complete workout should exercise the whole body and engages all the major muscle groups rather than just the flabby ones.
  2. Dynamic warm-up first. This will help burn more calories and prevent injury. The dynamic warm-up should include light cardiovascular activities such as jumping and stretches that engage both single-joint and multiple-joint movements and address mobility at the ankles, hips, and thoracic spine. It warms up the muscles, progressively raises your breathing and heart rate, and delivers more oxygen and nutrients to your muscle tissues. Heat also optimizes energy production by increasing your body temperature and heart rate before your workout, which makes you burn more calories during your workout and prepares your body for the harder training ahead. The length of the warm-up depends on the types of exercises that follow. A short warm-up should be performed for at least 15 minutes.
  3. Interval exchange: Alternating bursts of intense activity with bursts of lighter activity such as from jogging to sprinting and mixing it up can help speed up results and offer varieties to reduce fatigue. This strategy will burn more calories and more fat. To know more about sprint exercise, you could read Sprint Workout.
  4. Hire a personal trainer if you are a beginner to weights or other strength training, it not only helps prevent injury but also increases efficiency.
  5. Repetition: To maximize the fat-burning result during weight training, you should aim for 12 to 15 repetitions for each workout, focus on more reps, and increase the weight periodically. To flatten your tummy, doing only sit-ups is not going to get rid of your abdominal fat, but doing enough sit-ups will give your stomach a better look because it strengthens the abdominal muscles.

Flat belly exercise

To achieve the best result, your workout should include exercises that target all the muscle groups of your midsection including the front of your abdomen, the sides of your waist, and the bottom of your abdomen, also the important postural muscles of your lower back. Here are a few examples of exercises that will help you successfully get a flat abs.

Squat exercise is one of the best upper and lower body workouts. There are different ways to do it depending on your physical tolerance and strength, such as holding a weight to your chest or placing a weight on your back or using your body weight, and sitting down in an imaginary chair with a good balance. Squat workout fires up big and small muscles in your legs and core muscles, which gives you maximum abdominal activation. Here are some tips to make sure that you are doing it correctly and prevent injuries.

Tips for squat exercise[1]

Squats

  • Stand with your feet slightly apart and wider than the hip width. Point your toes slightly outward not straight ahead, and bend your knees slightly. It is suggested to distribute equal weight throughout each foot during the exercise.
  • Try not to extend your knees past your toes when you are bending your knees because this may cause damage to your tendon and ligament in the knees.
  • Keep your back straight and look straight ahead. In a controlled manner slowly lower yourself down and make sure that your heels are on the floor and your thighs are nearly parallel with the floor as if you were going to sit back in a chair. Your back should stay between 45 and 90-degree angle as a safe posture.
  • You should perform up and down movements of a squat in a slow and controlled manner.

Crunches: Crunch exercise is one of the most common abdominal exercises. Crunches work your upper abdomen, leg lifting works your lower abdomen, and side bends work your oblique muscle. Your belly can be toned up with sufficient amounts and repetitions of crunches. You could start a few crunches a day, increase to 15-25 per day, and add weights to your routine to enhance the result. Be aware that doing crunches will only build your abdominal muscles; it will not burn fat directly. You will still need to engage in a whole-body workout to blast fat more efficiently. Here are a few different ways to do crunches.

Tips for bicycle crunch exercises

Fitness young woman doing abdominal crunch on beach

  • Lie on your back on the floor. If you use a mat, ensure it doesn’t have too much cushioning.
  • Place your hands behind your head, your head should be resting on your hands.
  • Lift your knees to about a 45-degree angle and slowly go through a bicycle pedal motion.
  • Lift your shoulders towards opposite knees by using your abdominal muscles and touch your opposite knee with your elbows as you twist back and forth. Don’t let your elbows come together.
  • Control your breath and the movement of abdominal muscles, breathe evenly during the exercise, and don’t move too fast.

Tips for side crunch exercise

  • Lie on your back on the floor. Lean both legs to one side, your knees should be bent together and close to the floor.
  • Lift both shoulders off the ground at the same time, when your shoulders are off the ground, pause and hold that position for a few seconds.
  • Exhale and contract your abs as you go up.
  • Do several crunches on one side and switch to another side to repeat.

Tips for reverse crunch exercise[2]

  • Lie on your back, and place your hands with palms down at your sides.
  • Lift your feet off the ground. You can either bend your knees at a 90-degree angle or you can stretch your feet straight to the ceiling.
  • Lift your hips off the ground by using your abs. If you cannot lift your hips using just your abs, not pressing your hands and back, you’ll need regular crunches to build more strength first.

Sports Nutrition

Sports nutritionNutrition plays an important role in recovery from a workout, it helps:

  • Refuel the muscle and liver glycogen (carbohydrate) stores.
  • Replace the fluid and electrolytes lost in sweat and urine.
  • Synthesize new muscle protein, red blood cells, and other cellular components to recover from the challenge and damage caused by the exercise bout.

Nutrition tips for fat burning exercise

  1. Protein plays a critical role in muscle building and maintenance as well as many other physiological functions. Whey protein is a complete protein with a significant amount of L-leucine, which is a building block for muscle mass.[3] 
  2. Don’t exercise on an empty stomach because the body needs fuel to perform. Especially if you have diabetes, it can put you at risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).
  3. You should eat at least 30 to 40 minutes before the workout and then 30 to 40 minutes after the workout. 
  4. If you work out early in the morning, make sure you get enough carbohydrates such as a fruit or a cup of homemade smoothie because your body has used up most of the glycogen stores overnight.
  5. After a workout, the muscles are repairing. Post-workout nutrition will help you build metabolism-boosting fibers of the lean muscle. It is important to supply your body with a balanced meal that is rich in protein to further promote protein synthesis.
  6. If your workout lasts longer than 90 minutes, you should refuel your body with carbohydrates such as 1 cup of fruit juice (about 25-30g of carbohydrate) or a healthy shake to enhance your endurance. It is important to provide enough carbohydrates for a long workout such as long-distance rides and runs because your brain uses glucose as fuel to keep you focused, and muscle glycogen is the primary fuel used by the body during moderate and high-intensity exercise.
  7. Water helps maintain muscle tone and supports the supply of oxygen for the cells in your body through the bloodstream, and it lubricates your joints, especially when you exercise. You need more water when exercising to prevent dehydration. Water also plays an important role in the biochemical process of burning calories and removes toxic waste from your body, and enhances your body’s fat-burning efficiency. Dehydration slows down the fat-burning process. Consuming fluids greater than that lost in sweat and urine losses is recommended. Pay attention to your body’s signs, if your urine is dark yellow with an odor, it could be a sign of dehydration. Your urine should be light yellow or clear in color.

Do you know that you can use hypnosis to triple your exercise results and slim down fast? Our “I Love To Exercise Hypnosis Regarding” uses powerful brainwave technology and embeds the hypnosis recording in the alpha brainwave background music. It influences your subconscious mind to exercise your body with imagination, and helps triple your exercise results quickly and achieve your best version!

References

  1. http://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Squat
  2. http://www.wikihow.com/Do-Crunches
  3. Reidy PT, Walker DK, Dickinson JM, Gundermann DM, Drummond MJ, Timmerman KL, Fry CS, Borack MS, Cope MB, Mukherjea R, Jennings K, Volpi E, Rasmussen BB. Protein blend ingestion following resistance exercise promotes human muscle protein synthesis. J Nutr. 2013 Apr;143(4):410-6. doi: 10.3945/jn.112.168021. Epub 2013 Jan 23. PubMed PMID: 23343671

Quote

“To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. ” ~Buddha

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About the author: Lucy Liu
Lucy Liu

As a Holistic Health Practitioner, Registered Dietitian, TCM Practitioner, Energy Healer, Master Hypnotist, Reiki Master, Advanced Theta Healing Practitioner, Author and Speaker, Lucy Liu, the founder of optimalhealthsolutions.ca, has gained a good reputation in holistic health after many years of serving patients and clients as a holistic health practitioner. Lucy has developed a unique and comprehensive approach, which combines Western Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Energy Medicine, and Alternative Medicine together, to help others achieve optimal health by creating harmony between the body, mind, and spirit, and maintain long-term success for healthy lifestyle changes.
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