Reduce Body Fat With Strength Training And Sprints:

It's time to stop wasting endless hours every week on useless low-intensity cardio work! You can lose a far greater amount of body fat, much more quickly, by doing strength training and high-intensity sprint intervals. A few hours a week total can produce dramatic fat loss results.

A 2012 study published in the Journal of Obesity showed that a 12-week, high-intensity interval training program produced an avrege fat loss of 17 percent in overweight young men. Participants performed three 20-minute cycling sessions a week in which they alternated sprints of 8 seconds with rest periods of 12 seconds, for a total of 60 sets.

They lost 1.5 kg of fat from the trunk area, 2 kg of total fat, additionally they gained 1 kg of muscle, while increasing the use of fat for fuel by the body. There was a 13 percent increase in fat burning and a similar decrease in the use of carbohydrates for energy, which is a very positive thing for fat loss.

Compared to aerobic exercise, sprints are a far superior choice for burning fat because they allow you to achieve an intensity “threshold” that increases the body’s production of fat burning hormones such as growth hormone. Elevated levels of growth hormone in the body help to increase fat burning even when you are not exercising. Sprint intervals also enhance insulin sensitivity, allowing the body to use energy better and manage blood sugar levels.

To take off one pound of fat you need a defecit of 3,780 calories which would require one hour daily of moderate intensity aerobic cycling, which burns 550 calories. A study from Colorado State University revealed you actually burn more calories than you could even imagine with high intensity interval or sprint training.

The group was given their maintenance diet (in other words, NO restriction of calories) for three days.

After those three days, the participants stayed in a research facility for two days so that they could be analyzed for calories burned using oxygen analyzers and more.

On one of those days, each participant performed sprint intervals totaling 2-1/2 minutes of work with prescribed rest periods.

The results showed that they burned an average of an extra 200 calories on the sprint day.

200 calories for 2-1/2 minutes of work? That’s the power of sprints!

One reason for the misperception that aerobic training is better for fat loss than anaerobic training is that most studies comparing the two have used inadequate training protocols. Most studies that have tested the effect of strength training on fat loss have used isolation exercises performed on machines at moderately low levels of intensity with relatively low volume.

More positive results will come from a program that includes:

• Compound or multi-joint movements such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups, chin-ups, and bench presses.

• Train with a higher volume and work up to at least 4 sets per exercise. Shoot for 24 to 32 total sets per training session.

• Train with moderately heavy weights, in the 75 to 85 percent of your one rep max range.

• Perform your reps with a deliberate tempo so that you maintain tension on the muscles. In general, execute the positive portion of your reps explosively and the negative portion in a much slower, very controlled manner. In other words train to stimulate muscular growth.

According to another research study performed in Austrailia, participants who completed a sprint session consumed fewer calories over the next 38 hours than those who completed a continuous workout.

“Intense exercise may suppress ghrelin, a hunger-stimulating hormone”, says Aaron Sim, Ph.D., lead author of the study.

The key to this … use the right intensity. That’s why these sprint conditioning workouts are so short. Imagine suppressing your appetite without a single pill.

If you’re looking for the fastest way to lose fat without living in the gym and with outdated magazine routines, forget all the cardio junkies you see slaving away at the gym. It’s time to train smarter and usethe power of sprints