2. Work Hard, Rest Hard

We discuss the importance of rest breaks during workouts in our Exercise Overview, but taking rest breaks becomes especially important when you start doing high intensity exercise to burn fat, so we’re emphasizing it again here. Pushing your body hard is a great way to tap fat stores and build a leaner, more toned body. But hard exercise places a lot of stress on your system. All of this stress can really run your body down, leading to fatigue, joint injury, a compromised immune system, and even heart disease if you don’t balance it out with adequate rest. It’s essential to give your body plenty of time for rest and recovery during your workouts as well as between your workouts. By rest, we mean slow down to a slow walk or stop moving completely during regular intervals during your workouts. Catch your breath, and give your body a chance to recover fully before starting to move again.

Every phase of your training, from warm up, to weights, to cardio, needs to be broken up with rest intervals, both to ensure your health and to maximize results. Many of the important biochemical changes that exercise creates in your body take place while you are resting, not while you are exercising. These changes are critical to getting the best results from your workout. The fitness community hasn’t really woken up to the importance of rest breaks within workouts. The general focus is on pushing hard through the duration of a workout and worrying about recovery afterwards. This will change over the next decade as practice in gyms catches up to the front lines of science. Get ahead of the curve and start prioritizing rest intervals now. Take a little break every 4 to 12 minutes during your workouts (the higher the intensity, the more often you shold break) and you'll get better in less time.

3. Weight Training Can Double as  Cardio

Hate doing cardio but enjoy lifting? You’re not alone. You can get a pretty decent cardio workout with weights alone if you set things up properly. The key is to set up a series of different lifts for different body parts, all of which present a cardiovascular challenge. For instance, squats, push ups, and cable rotations can all get you out of breath. If you do these three exercises in rapid secession, one set after the other, you can get a solid cardiovascular workout. Check out our  Weight Training Cardio Video to see what were talking about.

If you do decide to follow a program like this in lieu of other cardiovascular exercise, try to get some long walks (45 to 60 minutes) in 2 to 4 times a week as well. Our bodies are built to walk, jog, and run, and we need to move our legs regularly for optimal health. That said, weight training cardio workouts really do the trick fat burning wise. We hope you enjoy.