Total Body Workouts Are Better Fat Burners

By Craig Ballantyne

Total body fat burning workouts beat cardio every day of the week. If you want to sculpt your body weith fat burning exercise sessions, burn fat with total body workouts.

Cardio (a.k.a. aerobic exercise) is no longer the King of Exercise. Research now shows that you can burn fat, improve your heart health, increase your quality of life, and reduce your risk of disability with resistance training.

Sure, you can get some benefits by using machines at your local health club. But total-body "functional" exercises (like squats, push-ups, and bodyweight rows) are even better. And resistance training doesn't mean barbell bench pressing with heavy weights. You can use dumbbell free weights or a variety of creative bodyweight exercises at home.

An extra benefit of bodyweight or free-weight exercises is that they give you the ability to complete a total-body workout in less time. For example, if you do a bodyweight or dumbbell squat, you will replace the need for the leg extension and leg curl machines in a health club.
Push-ups or dumbbell chest presses replace the chest fly and triceps extension machines. And chin-ups replace the need for machine-aided pulldowns and biceps curls.

In three or four "functional" moves, you can complete a total-body workout. Do each exercise two to three times for 8 to 12 repetitions per set. Rest one minute between sets. You can do your exercises in a circuit (all exercises done back to back without rest) or in supersets (two exercises done back to back without rest) to cut even more time from your workout. Aim for three total-body strength-training workouts per week.

Total body workouts are where its at.

Commercial Gym Example:

• Squat
• Seated Row
• Bench press or DB Chest Press
• DB Split Squat

That's a thorough workout, and you'll be sweating up a storm and your heart rate will be up - but that only matters for people that are addicted to the sweat and increased heart rate of cardio. What really matters is the turbulence put on the muscle and the increased metabolism and muscle growth that happens outside of the gym

Do the work in the gym, and burn the fat during recovery,
Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked total body fat burning workouts have helped thousands of men and women with weight loss and fat burning in less than 45 minutes three times per week. The TT fat burning workouts help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment. Craig's bodyweight workouts for fat burning help you lose fat without any equipment at all.

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