One day last week I performed a complete anti-fat workout that used my entire body to exercise. After that I went back to work answering inquiries people have about losing body fat. I had even more questions about using intervals as part of a workout plan and using one’s own body mass to exercise. I get questions from males and females alike from all over the place.

One message that caught my eye was from a new member that had a motivating story to tell me. We were talking about how to exercise on days off and he told me about the 10 step sequence he did that day.

When he got to the gym he met up with a few people who were doing their typical cardio routine, but he talked them into following my all-inclusive workout. They found it to be a great experience that was so exciting, they want to make it a weekly event.

This kind of series is lots of fun, plus it’s very effective to burn fat right off your body.

I’m going to list this series for you and you need to do it instead of intervals if you want.

One: Warming up with bottom half drills. Try a squat or an extension

Two: A medium top half warming drill like a push-up or kneel push-up would do.

Three: One legged moves, such as a lunge or step up for a medium fit person.

Four: Do some harder varieties of push-ups here with a high number of repetitions.

Five: Squats with high repetitions. These are great for getting your body conditioned.

Six: Next do a high number of repetitions that do the whole body like climbing mountains.

Seven: Another 1-legged drill. Choose a different one from before, perhaps the dead lift on one leg.

Cardio isn’t really an effective way to get rid of belly and thigh fat.You can try it, but it’s not going to get the results you want. The tratitional thought is to do crunching moves to improve your stomach and then get on the thigh machine to get the fat off your things. This is not the best approach. What you really need to do is intervals on a regular basis to get that flab burned off and to get your muscles toned. I’ve been getting my clients on interval plans for more than ten years, way before this style of training became popular.

Back then it was worse than it is today: people thought I was nuts for getting people off cardio and onto intervals. Even now people are still skeptical, but the difference is that they get great results.

I have a study from Australia where 3 sections of females were guided through a four month prgram for losing fat. There was one group used for reference. Another one performed interval training 3 days out of seven for 20 minutes.

Then the last group worked out with 3 periods of traditional cardiovascular drills of forty mins. each.

This study involved 45 females with weight conditions that averaged a BMI of 23.22.

At the end of the study they found that the women doing intervals had made significant headway against fat.

This was valid for all of them, although the heavier participants got the best results.

You might have guessed it: the women who worked with cardio didn’t accomplish anything at all. Intervals are accomplished in a number of ways: on machines inside, outdoors on your feet or on a bike.

What you do is alternate periods of high intensity with periods of low intensity, repeated for six cycles.

Observation will tell you that cardiovascular training actually works for some people who want to lose wright. For the most part, these people are young, males, and have more than average amounts of time to spend exercising. Also true is that the people who benefit from cardio in this manner are in the minority. For example, there was a study that suggests to us that cardio makes women fatter than if they did nothing.

Sitll, those who are getting some results with cardio aren’t getting the best results they can get. And again, cardio doesn’t get the results people expect. Some of that’s due to the new study that shows how it boosts your appetite.

There’s no doubt that there is a minority that has burned pounds using cardio, but there is a much larger majority that has gained weight through cardio. There’s nothing so disappointing as working out all the time and getting bigger rather than smaller.

The study I’m referencing was done over an 8 week period and showed that one of the reasons cardio fails is because it boosts appetite: those involved ate more than ever.

If you think that’s helpful, than just stick with cardio. It sounds bad to me. How will you reach your goal this way? A similar study that has been released shows that the ones who do lose weight through cardio only lose about 6 lbs over the course of a whole year.

That’s after investing an hour each day 6 days every week: not a very good return on investment.

So, again, scientific researchers contradict cardio as a valid method of weight loss. There have also been two head-on comparisons of interval training against cardiovascular training for weight loss.

Consistently, those who work with interval training will lose more fat than anyone doing cardio.

Many folks just don’t realize that cardio exercises are not required in order to lose fat. I know plenty of people who are bodybuilders and have lean bodies who never do any of the traditional cardio activities. You can be a champion without doing any cardio at all. You do resistance training and work on your nutrition plan. That long, slow cardio routine you do wastes a lot of time that you can use for other things.

You’ll see that if you do interval training, you’ll see the fat come off your body in a lot less time. The good news is that intervals work for novices and experts alike.

So if you’re a beginner, you can keep using the treadmill. You’ll just use it differently. You’ll get a period of hard work followed by a slower recovery period and then do more hard work in a cyclical manner.

So you can see that it’s easy to phase in the interval approach to your workout program.

You’ll find that you work hard for a period and then slow down to a rate that’s below traditional cardio. As you develop your training, you’ll morph into a seven mph rate alternating with a three mph walk. You have to have a good contrast in intensity between the burst and recovery for intervals to be effective.

An advanced workout will probably start with an intense ten mph run and then recover at a three mph walk. One more thing: you want to keep your interval sessions short.

You don’t need to be doing this for forty five minutes, else you’ll lose your form and your benefits. Just do about six intensity-recovery cycles and you’ll be done with an effective workout. Once you get in the habit of interval workouts, you’ll never want to go back to slow cardio.

People are always asking me ways to work out should they be stranded outside civilization somewhere. You know, without electricity, fitness clubs with televisions, mechanical devices, etc. what’s left to exercise with? This sounds like it’s somewhere in the jungle, but it can also be similar to the conditions at a hotel or at home. The good news is that you can build muscle and improve your body composition without any equipment.

All you need to do is put together a series of exercises that use your body’s weight. Here’s a good example of a good workout that you can build on for your own routine.

#1 – A rapid motion drill such as the jump-jack or the stationary run.

#2 – Squats with each hand in back of the neck to help your back’s higher section.

#3 – Simple push-ups done from a kneel or from a standard position.

#4 One Legged exercises like lunges.

#5 – Work for the back’s high section via the pull up, chin up, inverse row, or rowing with DBs or bands.

#6 – A different 1-leg routine like a splitting squat.

#7 – An abdominal drill that engages your whole physique. The climber is good for this.

#8 – A rapid motion exercises to end the session. Use burpees, jump-rope, sprint, etc.

Go through all 8 moves with a number of repetitions without resting as if it were one long sequence.

Then go through the whole circuit again two or three more times.

You want to make sure you get a good workout that stresses your body, but you don’t want to overdo it either. Assuming you make an honest effort at this sequence, someone who is new to fitness should limit themselves to one cycle until you get acclimated.

You won’t need to be stuck on an island to benefit from this kind of routine: you can do it right now.

Here’s the truth: cardio’s effective for fat-loss if the exercise is done with intensity. There were some studies done recently that spearated twenty seven overweight females into 3 categories: a control group, a Low Intensity Exercise (LIE) group that worked five days out of seven, and an High Intensity Exercise (HIE) group that worked 3 days out of seven. The intense work is done after the point where acids are accumulated in the bloodstream faster than they can be processed. At this level, there is a certain amount of discomfort that makes it difficult to deal with for more than half an hour.

The report that came out discussed how that the exertion period wasn’t measured by minutes, but by calories, so that both exercise groups burned the same amount. Each person worked off a caloric load of four hundred.

So the low intensity folks had to work a lot longer than the high intensity folks. In the end, the more intense group showed much better results.

In fact, the low intensity group was the same as the control group. They looked as if they did nothing.

This is why I recommend to people to avoid low intensity cardio. The ones who pushed real hard had lost stomach flab.

To review, let’s see what we know for a fact.

The harder you exert yourself, the quicker you’ll get a lean body. Pushing yourself hard is going to get rid of abdominal fat.

And, of course, you’re wasting your time doing slow cardiovascular workouts.

The obvious drawback is the time. Even with more intensity you have to spend at least half an hour just to use four hundred calories.

So if you want to get your body composed of less fat and more muscle, your best bet is with HIE, unless you’re willing to do intervals. Just get away from the cardio LIE: it’s going to nothing but frustrate you and make you lose time.

I’m going to list the top eight body mass moves that will make you muscular and lean when you string them together as a series. These are done without a gym membership and without any other equipment. Furthermore, working out this way is mobile. You can do it at home, in your yard, or in a park. So this can really make a difference to your freedom and you cash flow.

The way you can tell if your sequence is good or not is by seeing how many muscles are being engaged through it. A good aspect of this type of fat-burning routine is that you are making yourself more mobile.

This should improve your athleticism because it counters the over-use of muscles that you probably do every day. To have an effective series of exercises, you’re going to need pulls, pushes, squats, abs, and legs in a a half hour session.

Here I’m going to see what I can give you as an expert fat loss sequence that uses your body’s weight.

1. Jump Jacks – fifty repetitions.
2. Prison Squats, twenty repetitions.
3. Push-up +, fifteen times
4. Squatting Splits, Bulgaria style – twelve repetitions.
5. Inverse Body Rows, twenty repetitions.
6. Lunging Diagonally, twelve repetitions for left and right.
7. Climbing Mountains, fifteen for left and right.
8. Stationary Higher Knee, do twenty for left and twenty for right for 40 counts.

Some of you might be wondering if body weight routines can help build muscles: the answer is yes, unless you’re very advanced.

For the top half, doing dip and pull movements should be the first choice, with push ups coming in third. The bottom half is served well with one legged squatting and giant step-ups. You can change the speed and style of your work to make things harder.

I’m going to reveal some things about cardiovascular training that may change the way you think about it. Below are some workout plans that will help you shed abdominal flab and those extra pounds. You’re going to save time and get more results if you’ll pay attention to these. Cardiovascular routine number one: moving slowly.

This one reflects outdated thinking about cardio workouts. The endless exercise sessions that are supposed to help burn fat but never seem to make a difference.

While all the reasons for this not working are hard to understand, one thing’s for sure: it doesn’t work. There’s still another study that shows that females exercising for an hour of this kind of reduced intensity effort has no effect on belly fat, even after months of persistence.

Cardiovascular routine number two: intense exercise.

You’ve got to move fast and hard until you get at least a four hundred calorie burn done. This should take about a forty minute period. This is good, but it’s still not the best way to lose fat.

Cardiovascular routine number three: training with intervals.

An Australian study showed that doing intervals was superior to slower cardiovascular routines when it came to shedding stomach fat. Intervals are a preferred choice when trying to lose fat..

The way you do this is by alternating hard, intense work with easy recovery work.

Here’s a sample of a cardio-interval training session that can help you design your own.

Begin with a good warming up period and then exercise at an intense level that is around one-fifth more intense than usual. Do this for one minute. Next exercise at a light, cooling pace for a minute before returning to high intensity again.

This should be done for at least five cylces followed by a five minute cool down to close.

One of the most appealing machines in the gym right now is the elliptical trainer. You’ll find out though, that the elliptical is not very beneficial for calorie consumption and fat loss. A well respected magazine, Men’s Health, has come out very critically about the popular ellipticals, but there still isn’t much reason except for having bad knees for using one. Assuming each knee on your body is doing pretty well, you need to stay away from the ellipticals. Here are a few points about ellipticals that should change your mind.

To begin with, check out the results you are getting with your elliptical training: if it was so great, you’d get some reults after a while, wouldn’t you? The bottom like is that they can’t be trusted. Sure, they tell you all those calories were burned, but somehow your body always stays the same or gets worse.

Does it surprise you that the calorie count on the machines are inflated by about one-third? Another reason to eschew ellipticals is that they are too easy and you don’t feel like you’re doing anything. In fact, one Biggest Loser participant talked about how they are useless.

My rule of thumb is that if you’re not feeling like you’re working out, you’re not working out.

Right there you’ll find the 3rd reason to stay away from the ellipticals: the way people are. What I mean is that people are always looking for the easiest way to get what they want, and that’s why ellipticals are so popular.

Just think about what happens when there are an equal number of treadmills and elliptical machines: people gravitate to the ellipticals because they are easy.

The truth is that it’s going to take work to get that fat off your body and to keep it off. Looking for easy routes to your goals are going to disappoint you all the time.

Some people just need to get honest about what they’ve been doing. Even though you know that your exercise plan is doing you absolutely no good at all. Why do you keep up your aerobic routine even though you know you won’t lose weight or fat? There is an evil feature of cardiovascular exercise that causes people to go over the deep end.

I was thinking about these people while I finished my intervals and watching them going non-stop on the machines. One thing I discovered is that some cardio freaks have some bizarre habbits.

This was the basis for my list of indicators that you’re doing too much cardio.

1.You know you’re doing too much cardio if you need a five minute period before your workout to choose your reading material.

2. You do do much cardio if the person on the machine next to yours is better acquainted with you than your family members are.

3. You know you are doing way too much cardio when you’re aware of your calorie count by the minute for all the machines.

4. Cardio has gotten out of hand in your life if it makes you miserable and you’re rather have a limb sawed of without anesthesia, but you do it anyway.

5. You’re at the fitness center to lose, but rather than weight you’re only losing time and patience.

6. When all your television shows are on when you are on the cardio machines, you know that you’ve overdone it.

7. When you’ve got injured muscles from repeated use and you have to see specialists and perhaps even have surgery, you know that you’ve taken the cardio route a little bit too far.

OK, so I have been a little bit sarcastic, but do you get the point?

Cardio isn’t going to help you lose weight and it’s not going to help you be happy, and it’s not going to do anything but disappoint you in the end.