Someone asked me the other day which workouts should she choose to do. She was a little confused because in my articles I talk about weight training, kettlebells, interval training and bodyweight exercises. So I could see how she was a little confused.
My answer to her and all of you is use them all. You know the whole variety is the spice of life thing. When it comes to fat loss, gaining lean muscle and improving your fitness and health variety is your best path. Now I mentioned 4 different ways to exercise above do you know the combination and workouts you could put together?
Using variety will keep you motivated and focused on getting to your fitness and fat burning goals. I do not know about you but I tend to get bored easily and let's face it exercise is not always the most exciting thing in your life. If you keep challenging yourself with new and different workouts you will start to look forward to them. Especially once you start seeing the rewards in the mirror.
The one small problem with using exercise variety like I do is you have to really plan ahead. Back in the old day of doing the basic bodybuilding splits you went to your garage or gym or where you worked out and were going to do the same workout over and over.
I tend to go by feel sometimes just for whatever reason I might feel like doing a particular exercise or exercises so I do it. I do not want it to sound like I just jump into a workout not knowing what I'll do that day. I do have it planned ahead of time but I will deviate from the plan also.
What I want to give you here is how to incorporate a variety of fat burning and muscle building exercise programs to use. You do need to plan this ahead at at least a weekly basis.
Commit to Weight training Monday and Thursday use total body exercises. As an example:
# 1. Deadlifts
# 2. Pushups
# 3. Clean and Press
Again these exercises are not written in stone maybe for whatever reason I do not have the feel to do pushups I'll do Incline dumbbell presses instead.
Use heavy weights, keep your reps in the 4-8 range, 4-5 sets each (best for lean muscle gains and losing fat). Yes it is only 3 exercises but with these 3 exercises you have also worked correctly every muscle group, Workout with intensity, haphazard workouts give haphazard results. You workout for a purpose, burn fat, gain lean muscle and improved fitness and health.
Tuesday and Friday do some Kettlebell exercises – Use timed sets
Set a timer for lets say 5 minutes (this will depend on your fitness level adjust time up or down)
# 1. Kettlebell Swings – do as many reps as you can in your time frame
# 2. Kettlebell Snatch – same as above
With timed sets every workout try to do more reps than the workout before. You do not need to do 10 more reps if you can not even 1 more than your last workout is progression.
Wednesday and Saturday could be Interval Training.
Do some bodyweight circuits, Jump Rope, go outside and do some sprint intervals.
This is just an example of how you could set up your exercise week. No you do not have to workout 6 days a week this is just an example. You should set up your workout to your condition level. Keep your workouts short 45 minutes (for weight training) 20 minutes and under (for kettlebells and Intervals).
Like I said sometimes I feel like doing something in particular so I do it.
I guess in a round about way what I'm saying is if you say to myself I am weight training today but I really feel like doing Intervals than do Intervals that day. You are motivated to do interviews not weight train that day. Chances are if you say I have to (instead of I want to) weight train you probably will not even make it through your workout.