Are you looking for that “jump start” to rev your metabolism and get you bathing suit ready? The following ten tips will improve your workouts and ignite your metabolism. Try some or all of these tips, but beware, the result may be a number of admiring second glances and stares when you don that bikini or pair of trunks.

1. The majority of your workouts should be composed of free-weight or cable exercises.

Compared to machines, free-weight and cable movements often require more skill, create muscular balance, and have a greater metabolic cost. For example, it is more difficult to balance the weights, and to coordinate muscles when performing free-weight exercises. Although this may sound like a disadvantage, it is actually a benefit. By balancing and stabilizing free-weights or cables you are working more muscles through a greater range of motion resulting in more muscles developed and more calories burned.

2. Use mostly compound (multi-joint and multi-muscle) exercises.

When focusing on improving body composition, you can’t worry about “detail” exercises, so you should use exercises that’ll get you the biggest bang for your buck. Isolation exercises can be used at the end of a workout to work on a specific weakness, but only do the bare minimum.

Virtually every savvy fitness professional is privy to the fact that compound exercises recruit the most muscle groups for any given body part.

If you seek lean muscle and the increase in metabolism that comes with it, you must choose exercises that allow for the greatest load. One of the main reasons why squats are superior to leg extensions for quadriceps development relates to the fact that the load you can expose the quadriceps to is much greater with squats. That’s why presses and dips will give you great triceps development, while triceps kickbacks will do little for triceps development and even less for the metabolism.

A good rule of thumb is to use lifts that will allow you to use the most weight. These will have a systemic effect on your body that’ll help maintain or increase your muscle mass, and in turn ignite your metabolism.

3. Super-set or group exercises.

Perform either non-competing muscle group training or antagonist training. Non-competing muscle group training would involve doing a set of a lower body exercise, and following it up with an upper body exercise Antagonist training is executed by alternating exercises that target opposing muscle groups (e.g. chest and back). The list of benefits includes: quicker recovery, greater strength levels and shorter workout times.

This design can be a huge advantage in your mission to burn fat. If you alternate exercises for opposing or non-competing muscle groups, you’ll be able to keep your heart rate elevated and burn calories like a blast furnace!

4. Keep rep ranges, in general, between 8 and 12.

Through research, it has been determined that the best range for hypertrophy (muscle gain) is roughly between 8-12 reps. Since the main focus of your resistance training efforts is to gain lean body mass and stimulate your metabolism, this rep range fills the bill perfectly. “High reps for tone and fat loss” is the “big kahuna” of all training myths! Somehow the aerobics, yoga and Pilate’s community have convinced us that when we perform bodyweight exercises or light resistance training for high reps, our muscles magically take on a beautiful shape without growing or bulging. On the other hand, if you challenge yourself with moderately heavy weights, your body will take on a bulky, unflattering appearance. If you believe this, you probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy!

5. Rest only 30 to 60 seconds between sets.

When you keep the rest periods under one minute, it’s easier to stay focused on the task at hand and keeps your heart rate elevated. In addition, it forces your muscles to recover more quickly between sets, along with keeping your nervous system revved up.

If your first movement in an upper/lower body superset is squats, you might want to rest 60 seconds before attempting your second movement. However, if your first exercise is a fairly “easy” exercise, like lat pull downs, you might only wish to wait 30 seconds before doing the second part of the superset.

6. Every session should consist of approximately six to eight exercises. Why? Because empirical evidence has shown that normal trainees can consistently maintain six to eight exercises per session without burning out.

It’s imperative to base your exercise selection around compound, multi-joint exercises. Seventy-five percent (75%) of your exercises for each session must be compound exercises. Six single-joint isolation exercises are not going do the trick. Sure, you can perform a few isolation exercises, but the majority of your exercise choices should be multi-joint.

7. Perform Total Body Workouts

First and foremost, you must drop the notion that a muscle group can only be trained once or twice a week. Fitness enthusiasts from the past didn’t train that way and you shouldn’t either. The more frequent muscle producing / fat burning sessions you can have, the better.

8. Cardio is not the cure-all for Obesity

Cardiovascular exercise aids in the creation of a caloric deficit, but the caloric expenditure during cardio is temporary. Strength training addresses the core of the problem by permanently increasing the rate at which the body burns calories by adding muscle. The best programs will include both strength training and cardiovascular training, but the core or the programs effectiveness is resistance training.

9. When you do cardio, do it first thing in the morning.

Do your cardiovascular training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. You’ve gone 8 or more hours without eating, so your blood sugar levels are at their lowest when you first wake up. After about 10-15 minutes of cardio training on an empty stomach, you’ll have burned up all your remaining blood sugar.

Once your blood sugar is used up, the only remaining source of fuel your body has to continue with your cardio exercise is your stored body fat.

10. Vary your pace during your cardio training sessions.

Don’t maintain a constant steady pace while you’re on the treadmill or elliptical machine. Numerous studies have shown you’ll burn more calories and more fat if you train in intervals.

Start out by going for 1 minute at your normal walking pace. Then, for the next 30 seconds, speed it up to a run. After the 30 seconds at an increased pace, slow back down to your original pace for 1 more minute. This is known as an interval. Repeat this interval style cardio for 10-20 minutes.

Performing your cardio in this “interval” fashion will allow you to burn more fat and calories in less time than just keeping a nice steady pace. This will increase the results you see while reducing your time on the treadmill, stationary bike, or whatever form of cardiovascular training you do.

2) Initially deduct 10%(to a maximum of 500Kcal)off the total maintenance calories. Drastically reducing your calories will result in muscle and water loss – not fat loss.

3)Divide you calories over 5 or 6 meals rather then 2 or 3. You should aim to eat every 3-4 hours.

4)Cut out all simple carbohydrates (except straight after exercise, eat whole grain, high fibre foods.)

5) Exercise at least 3 times a week, doing 30 minutes of cardio to a reasonable level of intensity. This will help to create the calorie deficit and encourage your body to lose fat.

6)Make simple replacements in your diet, Sweetener in place of sugar, diet drinks in place of full sugar drinks, use leaner cuts of meat etc. At first these changes may be difficult but you will get used to them and make vital calorie savings every day.

7) Drink plenty of water – at least 2 litres of water every day – if you are dehydrated you body will be less efficient and will make fat loss more difficult.

Try to eat low carb(complex only!), low fat and moderate protein. From my experience the South Beach Diet is excellent.

9)Keep a food diary to monitor how many calories you are consuming – it is very easy to over eat.

10) Supplementing you diet can make fat loss easier. A diet high in protein can help preserve muscle (more muscle means an increase in metabolism). There are also some fat loss supplements available which help boost your metabolism, this is useful as your metabolism may slow during extended periods of dieting.

This article is written from my own experiences. I have lost 20lbs of fat and gained 20lbs of muscle. My body fat is 11%. Please consult a doctor for proper medical advice.

http://www.thesupplementsite.co.uk

1) Anaerobic Exercise

If you think you can just run laps or pedal that fat away, think again. Muscle tissue is what burns the most calories in our bodies and you need to life weights in order to create bigger muscles that will burn more calories. Now although aerobic exercises such as cycling or swimming are also necessary, the fact remains that building bigger muscles is the best way to lose weight and keep it off. This is because you are creating a more efficient calorie burning machine by lifting weights which will ensure you success with your weight loss goals.

2) Warm-up and Cool Down

Warming up before exercising and taking the time to cool down afterwards with some light exercises are not generally seen as essential to a fat burning program. However, the reason why a lot of people tend to give up on their weight loss goals is because they failed to see the progress they hoped for when they began. An injury, even one that only lasts for a few days, can set your weight loss goals back by weeks and lead to a loss of stimulation. You need to plan an extra twenty minutes into your weight lifting routine for these two essential activities or you risk injury and derailing your weight loss plan.

3) Diet, Diet, Diet

This should not be a killer way to maximize your weight loss goals but it is. The reason for this is because people tend to think of losing weight in two ways: diet, or exercise. Hey, these two go hand in hand and you are never going to maximize your fat burning routine in the gym unless you take care of your body outside of the gym. Stop thinking of meals in terms of three: instead, think 5 meals with smaller portions. The FDA recently developed a new food pyramid with this very idea in mind and you should check it out before starting your fat burning program because it can save you a lot of time and energy if you get the diet part figured out before even stepping into the gym.

4) Plan Workouts

The body is the most complex machine on the planet and you can’t just hope to step into a gym and jump on a machine or some weights and think that you are going to see the results you want without knowing how they affect your body. The ideal exercise routine is done only 3 or 4 times per week and only for 30-45 minutes at a time. You cannot work your body more than this because it will actually cause your muscles to break down which means you will be burning fewer calories, and therefore, not maximizing your fat burning routine in the gym. If you have any doubts about what kind of routine is ideal for your goals, don’t be afraid to consult an physical trainer to help you set up a program that is best suited for you.

5) Nutritional Supplements

If you really want to maximize your fat burning routine in the gym, then you need to consider using nutritional supplements. Now I am not talking about those crazy supplements that promise to burn fat for you while you sit and watch tv! I am talking about essential fatty acids, amino acids, whey protein….things that will truly maximize your workouts that you can’t always expect to get in the foods you eat every day. Again, consult a physical trainer if you want to know which supplements are best for your weight loss goals.

6) Set Weekly Goals

I know that this just seems terribly obvious but the truth is that most people are not thrilled with the idea of working out so it is easy for them to skip a session or indulge in some pizza and think that they will make up for it next time. Listen, next time never comes and when you stop seeing the scales go down, the motivation just seems to stop. By setting weekly goals, you can track your progress and make it that much more likely that you will adhere to the goals when you see things are not going as expected.

7) No More Late Night Snacks

This one may not seem to make sense, but I assure you that it will help maximize your fat burning exercises. The reason is your metabolism. When you eat right before you go to bed, it throws your body off and you probably notice that you awaken and don’t feel hungry. Then, you skip breakfast entirely or only snack on a bagel or something on you way into work.

The result: the body goes into conservation mode. This means that it slows down your metabolism and that means you are burning less calories throughout the day. Plus, it increases the likelihood of snacking and basically just sets the scene for a bad cycle. Eating five smaller portioned meals per day also has to do with your metabolism as it has been found that metabolism remains highest when there is a consistent supply of food in the body. You might not believe that late night snacking affects the way your body burns fat when working out, but it does.

Now some of the things listed above are obvious while some just seem silly. And yet, taken together and consistently adhered to, these 7 little ideas will maximize your fat burning in the gym and get you to that body you can see in your mind but not the mirror far quicker than if you just go about things in a disorganized and inconsistent manner.