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Losing weight can be fun (and easy) with these workout tips to burn fat faster from Craig Ballantyne, Men’s Health Fitness Advisor, Personal Trainer – Beyond Cardio Workouts

Forget about cardio, machines, and aerobics classes. Weight loss workouts have come a long way in the last 10 years to help men and women burn fat faster than ever. We’ve gone from boring, ineffective, long cardio workouts to finally using interval training to lose fat and slash your workout time in half.

I’ve also discovered the fat burning secrets of resistance training and bodyweight exercises to help you lose fat at home without expensive or fancy machines. Heck, you don’t even need a gym membership any more to burn fat effectively.
But there are even more and better ways of burning fat that you might not know about. So here’s Part 1 of the top 7 hottest trends to burn fat this year.

1) Competition & Challenge-Type Workouts Will Be Found in More Fat Loss Programs

The popular 300 challenge workout revolutionized fat burning programs because it introduced a new method internal motivation. By adding some form a challenge workout to your program – such as a workout you try to complete faster and faster each week – you’ll have a better chance of sticking to your program.

In addition to the 300 workout, you could also try one of my Bodyweight 500 workouts, or create your own challenge workout. You could even just try to run a greater distance in 20 minutes each week. Just make sure to switch up your challenge workout every 4 weeks. Challenge yourself and you’ll find this to be a powerful motivational tool to keep your fat loss progress going.

2) We’ll Return to Working Out with a Partner or in a Group for Social Support

In the past few years, many folks started exercising at home by themselves, but there is actually a good reason to invite a friend over for a workout or to exercise in groups.

Research shows that if you workout with a partner who is losing weight, you have a better chance of losing weight yourself. If you are working out by yourself right now and not getting the results you want, then recruit a partner to exercise with you (but make sure you know they will stick with the program and succeed). This could mean that you try to workout regularly with a friend, family member, or spouse.

Bootcamp workouts are also going to be hot, hot, hot as time goes on, as more and more people prefer this motivating, economical way to work out with a trainer while getting social support from a dozen or so other men and women with the same goals. This will also expose you to more success stories and people who can give you tips and support to burn fat.

Plus, bootcamp workouts don’t use machines or long cardio exercise, so they must rely on bodyweight exercises and interval training, which you discovered in recent years to work really fast for fat loss. The combination of intervals, bodyweight exercises, and social support are going to help a lot of folks burn fat successfully this year.

3) More and More People Will Start Training Like an Athlete to Burn Fat

Bootcamp training leads perfectly into our next hot tip. This year, you’ll see more and more trainers and fitness magazines showing people how to exercise like a power athlete to burn fat. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.
Just like any fat loss program, the “train like an athlete to burn fat” workouts must be intelligent and professionally designed. After all, it’s sad to see folks doing jumps on concrete, or doing athletic exercises in the wrong order that could lead to injury. That’s not smart athletic training.

When doing a “Fat Burning Athlete Workout”, your program must follow a specific order. You’ll start with a total body warm-up with bodyweight exercises, such as prisoner squats, lunges, pushups, spiderman climbs, planks, and even exercises like hurdle walks, high knees, skipping, inchworms, and walking hamstring stretches.

The correct time to do power exercises, such as jumping or agility drills, is right after your thorough warm-up because you are fresh, not fatigued. This will help you perform jumps and short sprints (or exercises like cleans, kettlebell snatches or medicine ball throws) with maximum effort and proper form. Power exercises should not be done after interval training or any other type of exhaustive exercise.

Following power exercises, an athletic fat burning workout would spent a short amount of time on essential strength exercises, such as squats, upper body exercises (pushing and pulling), and single-leg exercises. This could be followed by strength-endurance exercises if needed, such as high-repetition bodyweight exercises.

Finally, the athletic fat burning program would end with interval training for conditioning and fat loss. This will exhaust your energy stores and you’ll finish with static stretching. These workouts are fun, fast, and effective, and also more applicable to daily living than spending an hour on a cardio machine.

Working out like an athlete will give you the best looking, and best performing body that you’ve ever had!

In Part 2 of the 7 hottest trends for fat loss (article coming soon), you’ll learn about training for personal bests, alternative interval training workouts, the secret to success of the new generation of transformation contests, and the truth about shorter, no-cardio workouts.

Click here to check out Craig’s HOT new fat burning Turbulence Training workouts