5 Cardio Methods to Burn Fat

Check out my client Kamran’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.

When it comes down to it most people incorporate cardio sessions to burn more body fat. And the reason is obvious

when performed correctly cardio can definitely be a great tool to help create a larger caloric deficit so you can lose weight and lower your body fat percentage.

But the truth is most people don’t exactly love doing cardio, and whether you love it or not there are ways that you can highly increase the efficiency as well as the results that you get from your cardio sessions.

That’s why in this video I want to show you 5 powerful ways that will allow you to burn much more fat in less time with your cardio training sessions.

By incorporating these methods that I’m about to go over you’ll be able to spend at least half the amount of time you normally spend on cardio while getting the same results.

The first and one of my favorite ways to get more out of your cardio workouts is with density sets.

There are a lot of ways that you can use density sets for fat loss, but I want to go over the basic principles that you’ll need to know to start doing this right away.

First you want to select at least 3 to four exercises that don’t directly compete with each other because you’ll be performing these exercises back to back.

Not only will this force you to take a break faster, but you’ll also be performing at a lower intensity that you actually can be because your muscles will still be tired from the previous exercise.

So we want to combine exercises like barbell squats, rows, and military presses for example because squats work your legs, rows will work your back and biceps, and military press will work your shoulders and triceps. 

 Or if you don’t have access to gym equipment you can combine something like walking lunges, pushups, and sprawls. Again all of these exercises should work at least slightly different muscle groups.

Next, you’ll set up a timer for 5 minutes. You can set up longer intervals like 10 minutes as well, but you’ll most likely have to take more breaks in between your exercises and sets.

Once you start the timer you want to perform each exercise for a set amount of reps, 10 reps for each exercise is a perfect place to start. Once you complete 10 reps

for one exercise you want to move to the next one right away with no break. After you complete all 3 or 4 exercises you want to repeat them again trying to take either no break or as short of a break as possible.

Like I already said you can do this with weights or without weights, although you’ll probably burn more calories with weights.

When using weights some people like to pyramid up, but I recommend warming up, then pyramiding down.

So after warming up you would start each exercise with a heavyweight load and then you would drop the weight each round.

The primary goal is to keep moving between exercises at a fast pace so after the first round you might have to drop the weight by up to 50 percent to avoid taking a break.

The next round you might only drop it by 25 percent and the following round only by 10. You want to drop the weight by just enough to keep moving between the exercises

without taking a break, and if you have to take a break try to keep the break as short as possible.

Just 3 of these 5 minute density circuits will be enough to burn a significant amount of a calories.

Another method that’ll help you burn more fat is the 30 – 30 drill. This is a variation of Tabata training that is very simple to understand and set up.

You would perform an exercise for a high-intensity burst for 30 seconds and then switch to moderate intensity for 30 seconds then

back to the high intensity, and you would just switch back and forth aiming for a total of 15 minutes.

You’re going to get exhausted fast with this drill so occasionally instead of a moderate or a high intensity interval you can throw in a low intensity interval to catch your breath.

You can obviously do this with all cardio machines, but the 30 – 30 drill can also be done with almost any exercise.

You can use a battle rope or a slam ball for example where you slam as fast as you can for 30 seconds and then slow down to a moderate pace for 30 seconds.

This is also a great drill to do on a boxing bag. You can do a 30 second speed interval where the only goal is to throw as many punches as fast as possible,

followed by a 30 second moderate interval where you select your shots and work on your technique,

and then you would finally follow that up with 30 seconds of power shots throwing everything you have into each punch.

The next way to burn more fat from your cardio workouts is to incorporate incline or hill training.

For each degree of incline, you’ll burn about 10 percent more calories than you would if you were running at the same speed for the same amount of time on a flat surface.

Treadmills, stair climbers, and ellipticals, for example, offer you a way to do cardio at an inclined angle to make the workout more intense,

also to incorporate more of your glutes as well as your back muscles, and to ultimately burn more calories.

This method is especially helpful for those of you that may not be able to run because it’s too difficult for you or because it irritates your joints.

Walking on the treadmill isn’t much of workout, but if you add enough of an incline it’ll feel like you’re hiking up a mountain.

 I see so many people making this mistake where they’re walking at an inclined angle with both their arms locked out tightly gripping onto the treadmill.

By holding on you’re taking away a lot of the benefits especially for your glutes and your lower back. When you need an occasional break you can hold on for like 30 seconds,

but make sure you set the incline to an angle that you can handle for the majority of the workout without holding on or you can do this for intervals just like the 30-30 drill.

Let’s move on to the next method which is to incorporate kettlebells. Ace or the american council on exercise published an article with the headline saying that kettlebells could provide twice the results in half the time.

And this article was completely backed by scientific research. Their study found that the average person can burn 400 calories in just 20 minutes with a kettlebell.

That’s 20 calories burned per minute, or the equivalent of running a six-minute mile. Kettlebells can help you combine the best of both worlds resistance training and cardio.

It’s also a very functional way to workout and uses a lot more stabilizer muscles than traditional weight training.

This creates a workout that simulates the way you move in real life giving you more applicable strength gains.

To burn a whole lot of calories, all you need is a 30-minute kettlebell workout. Or if you want to spend less time you can combine a couple exercises into circuits for a 15-minute high-intensity interval training workout using kettlebells.

For the last tip, I want to give you a couple of ways that you can make your Liss or low-intensity steady state cardio sessions better for fat loss.

Because so far we’ve mostly discussed methods that involve high intensity interval training for short durations,

but there are some simple tweaks you can make to burn more calories from your longer duration cardio sessions as well.

Running outside will burn more calories because the ground doesn’t move under you the way it does on a tredmill.

If you’re running on a flat surface on a treadmill your mostly just catching your body weight, switching from one foot to the other.

On the other hand when you’re running outside not only do you have to catch yourself but you also have pushed off with each step.

Not only does this burn more calories, but it also incorporates more of your posterior lower body muscles like your glutes and hamstrings.

Again on the tredmill you can increase the incline to get the same type of effect. Another thing you can do for longer duration cardio is engage in full body cardio workouts.

So many people use the eliptical at a very low resistance level and they just go as fast as possible.

Doing it like this makes it very easy to keep moving purely off of momentum. If you want an effective elliptical workout focus more on increasing the resistance to the point where you’re using a minimal amount of momentum rather than focusing on speed.

To burn the most calories from longer duration cardio sessions you should also know what machines burn the most amount of calories.

Obviously this does highly depend on the intensity that you can handle on each machine but

My personal favorite cardio machines for fat loss are the stairclimber, rowing machine, and tredmill.

That’s it guys I really hope these tips have helped you out  Also as always, I want to remind you guys that to burn fat you can’t ignore your diet and only focus on exercise.

Diet plays one of the biggest roles in the fat loss process. For that reason I have a simple done for you approach that will involve no trial and error on your part and on average it has my clients losing a minimum of 20 pounds or 5 percent of their body fat in only 6 weeks.

It comes with a customized diet plan based on your weight, your goals, and your gender. It also comes with a 42-day workout plan with access to a full video exercise library so you always know exactly what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

And you’ll also get an accountability coach to mentor you and guide you through the whole program. The best part is that if you can commit to completing this 6-week challenge from day one to day 42 with no cheating and no quoting not only will you be absolutely amazed by your results from following a plan like this with consistency, but you’ll also get the whole challenge for free.

Energy expenditure with indoor exercise machines.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8618368

Kettlebell workout study:

https://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/kettlebells012010.pdf