You would not probably believe the number of people that ask me that question.

If I got a £1 for every time…..blah, blah, blah (you know the rest).

I’m not sure where the ‘cardio is best for fat loss’ comes from but it is probably because some media types took some of the research out there and spun it into a story with out fully understanding what the research was actually doing.

So here is the truth as is known to a number of top fitness professional:

‘The best way to burn fat is to do interval cardio training rather than long slow boring cardio’.

It buns more fat, you get it done quicker and get the results you were looking for.

Listen to my rant on this below.

Remember train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

Best wishes,

Alex

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 Cardio Training For Fat Loss: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Below you’ll find the first of my new podcast rants.

This episode is all about the terrible biceps curl technique you see many people all around the world performing.

It’s only a short (less than 2 minute) rant and the first of many about all the fitness lies and secrets that aren’t often shared with those who could get the best results interms of fat loss and muscle gain.

Enjoy!

Play Now:

 Will you please stop swaying!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I was talking to a client the other day about there training and the need to increase the amount of work they are doing if they are going to continue to get the results they were looking for at the start.

Now there is a lot of really good things this person should be doing to there nutrition and eating plan in order to stimulate the body to burn fat all day but he likes his alcohol.

Now I’ve given him a ‘talking to’ about his drinking and hopefully some of it will have stuck. I only had to mention the ex client of mine who unfortunately died a couple of months ago due to kidney and liver failure – he really did ‘work hard, play hard’ – and unfortunately left a wife and two young children behind.

So to increase this clients metabolism so that he burns through fat for longer periods of time I have introduced some new, extra, training sessions that only last around 20 minutes.

I know a lot of you will be aghast, sat at your PCs and wondering whether or not I’ve just made a typo, but I assure you that in 20 mins you can do a lot to increase your fat loss potential.

Yes you don’t start burning fat for 15-25 mins after starting exercise, but the important distinction here is that you don’t ’start’ burning fat until you have moved it from the fat sites into the blood and too the muscles. However, you do continue burning fat after you finish the exercise and it is not the amount of fat you burn during the exercise that’s important but the amount you continue to burn afterwards.

This is the beauty of using short intense cardio interval sessions for fat loss.

You burn more in the 24 hours after than you would if you’d done slow cardio for an hour.

This well known, but misunderstood, phenomenon is called EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption) and what it means is that if you cause a metabolic disturbance in your muscles (as you do during interval training) you will continue to burn up fat for at least the next 24 hours sometimes longer.

Lot’s of smart trainers use these tactic when writing and designing workout programs that get people results. Alwyn Cosgrove of www.coachcosgrove.com calls if ‘Afterburn Training’ and Craig Ballantyne refers to it as Turbulence Training . These are both great examples of how to use EPOC to benefit you the most.

I am currently using these exact techniques and tactics to try and shift some excess body fat I have accumulated recently. I am also using my new ‘Fat Burn In 30′ system because I am struggling with time and really want to get the best all day fat burn that I can.

Stay tuned for more of my ‘Fat Burn In 30′ workouts.

Remember, train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

Alex

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So as promised here’s a sneak peek at some of my own training.

My goal is to shift about 18lbs of fat in as short a space of time as possible.

To enable me to do this I have started some high intensity training that will definitely burn up fat. My fat burning workout looked like this:

Warm up 5 min cycle.

A) Kettlebell Swing – 2 hands, x10 – 2 sets, 30secs rest

B) Kettlebell Swing – single arm, x10 left & right (LR) – 2 sets, 30 secs rest

C1)* Lat Pulldown – wide overhand, x 10 – 2 sets, 15 secs rest
C2) Barbell Bent Over Row – wide under hand, x 10 – 2 sets, 30 secs rest

D1) Barbell Stiff Leg Deadlift – snatch grip, x10 – 2 sets, 15 secs rest
D2) Single Arm Horizontal Biceps Curl, x 10 – 2 sets, 15 secs rest
D3) Single Arm Triceps Press down – reverse grip, x 10 – 2 sets, 30 secs rest

Bike sprints, 30 seconds at RPE (get a full RPE explanation by downloading my fitness foundations manual by entering you name and email above) – 9 followed by 30 secs RPE 5 – five minutes total.

Cool down 5 mins.

Total workout time less than 30 mins!

You can see me doing the exercises in the video below, but unfortunately exercises D1-D3 didn’t come out very well, so I didn’t add them and will record them again.

See my ‘Fat Burning Results Workout’ here on my YouTube channel

*NB. Exercises that have a letter followed by a number means that you do the A1 followed by A2 before returning back to A1 for the described number of sets.

Let me know what you think?

Alex

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I am very proud of her effort and really pleased that she made it on her own, after I let her down by not running it with her.

Between us we raised over £1000 for BRACE an Alzheimer’s research Charity (most people transferred their money on to Sarah when they found out I wasn’t doing it.

It’s also our 5th Wedding anniversary, and the first time we have ever actually spent it together as Sarah is usually away working. So we have a double celebration tonight and will probably open a bottle (just one though!)

As I promised yesterday you’ll be seeing more of my training as I have been videoing quite a bit over the last few days.

Look out for the first one on Wednesday.

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I have decided that I am not going to run the half marathon on Sunday tomorrow.

I did my 30 minute run back on day 45 after the light cycle on day 44. I planned to run an easy 3 miles and see how it went. Well about a mile and a quarter in to it my left calf went into spasm . I slowed to a walk, stretched it out and just tried to take it easy and see if it would loosen.

It didn’t stop so I finished up the session on the spot and wanted to see how it felt the next day. I did a lot of golf ball trigger pointing and had a sports massage to see if I could keep on top of it.

The following day I woke up with a swollen knee which was pretty painful. More Physio treatment and rest lead us to decide it was probably the cartilage so would just try and rest it. I went off for a holiday in Spain with the plan to keep resting it and doing some exercises in the pool and sea.

It still didn’t get much better so I had to think what I was going to do.

I almost did try and run it and thought I’d just put up with any consequences but the wife asked me a really simple question “What advice would you give your clients?” As soon as she said it I knew exactly what as a fitness professional I should be saying; “don’t run it’s not smart, it’s not clever and go and get it investigated by a specialist (probably end up getting an MRI scan) which will really answer the question”.

So I’m relegated to the support team for tomorrow’s event, but I’ll let you know how Sarah gets on.

Keep your eyes posted here as I’m going to tell you what I’ve been doing since I got back from holiday because I can still train other parts of my body. I’ve even been recording some of the exercises so you can see exactly what I’m getting up to.

Just because I’m injured doesn’t mean I can’t train!

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