How to Lose Fat and Influence People

Do you want a flat tummy, less wobbly thighs and a more toned body? If so you are not alone with obesity rates soaring in the UK despite all that modern technology and science can offer.

I do a lot of my training in parks in West London and every time I go out I see the people doing crunches and situps to get a flat tummy, thinking that if they work that area, they will “tone” that area. If it were that simple then we would all have washboard stomachs by doing a few exercises per day. These endless situps will make your abdominal muscles stronger, and give them more endurance, but if you are carrying a spare tyre around your belly then nobody will see the product of your hard work. So how do you shift that weight?

Well it is not going to happen overnight, but what you need to do is start doing a mixture of cardiovascular training and resistance training, combined with a healthy diet (see future posts) and balanced lifestyle (also coming soon). At the heart of your weight loss programme should be resistance training. By this I mean using your body weight, dumbbells, medicine balls, resistance bands and so on in a progressive manner to change the composition of your body. By performing these exercises you can build new muscle, which in turn raises your metabolism and capacity to burn fat as fuel throughout the day, even when you are not training. This is where the women always say....”But I don’t want massive arms like Arnie!!” Well you won’t get massive as you are missing one vital ingredient – Testosterone.

So let’s think about some good exercises that will have the desired effect. What we want to do is whole body or “compound” exercises that use the big muscles of the body like those in our legs. A few perfect examples are the squat, lunge, dead lift and press up. All of these exercises recruit a large number of muscles all over the body to perform them and as a result they will stimulate muscle growth. We will look at exercise form in the future. By performing a circuit of different exercises we can maintain a high intensity and really make the body work hard. If you are not sweating, or are not out of breath then you are not working hard enough and will not shift much weight from those flabby areas – Simples!

I will talk about circuits and routines in future posts, but for now go out and learn to squat and deadlift. Ask your trainer or a friend or just go on youtube. Happy training.......

Ben