The Best Exercise For Fat Loss

There’s an obesity epidemic that is affecting society. For instance, the average person takes between  3,000-4,000 steps a day, most likely because of the busy sedentary lifestyles we live. Combine that with easy access to tasty high calorie foods, no exercise, and we have a Fat Loss problem.

Plenty of people put in the effort to improve their body composition. They exercise for hours for fat loss, so why don’t they see the progress they want?

The answer lies within their programming. These people are typically cardio bunnies or as Martin Berkhan describes, suffer from fuckarounditis. 

This is because their main focus is on burning calories with the impression that they can “tone” their muscles by aimlessly moving around 5 pound dumbbells or hitting up their local boot camp classes. 

Granted, their progress relies on whether the number on the scale will go up or down instead of what actually matters (measurements, pictures, strength gains, etc).  

After all of the hours of hard work each week, they’re left skinny fat and more confused than before as to why their weight has stalled. 

As a result, their frustration starts to kick in when the scale stays the same or *gasp* goes up. 

Undoubtedly, they give up because they aren’t seeing the progress they want.

To that end, this article is about why you may not be seeing the fat loss results you want, despite the numerous hours of exercise you put into the gym every week. Hopefully, I can help you achieve the results you are looking for and not be that person.

I hope you enjoy it.

What’s The Best Exercise For Fat Loss? – Strength Training

Although strength training isn’t technically an exercise, the title sounded good so I stuck with it. 

There’s a difference between exercise and strength training, so it is important to not get them confused. The goal of strength training is to get you strong and build muscle by adding resistance to your muscles. 

The resistance placed on your muscles can be from your bodyweight, bands, cables, barbells, dumbbells, sand bags, milk jugs, or anything that has weight to it.

On the other hand, exercise relies on moving to burn calories. Keep in mind, just because you sweat does not mean you had a good workout. The amount you sweat is based on genetics. Think of people who sweat just from sitting down. If you want to sweat, go to a sauna or run outside on a hot sunny day.

In this article, I will consider cardio to be the exercise I am talking about. So, why does strength training matter more than cardio for fat loss? Because it’s more effective and sustainable.

Nutrition Matters More Than Exercise For Fat Loss

Most importantly, nutrition and diet are the main driver of fat loss. You can’t eat like an asshole and expect to get in shape. The only way to lose fat is to be in a calorie deficit. 

Think of it like this…It takes hours to burn hundreds of calories and takes only 5 minutes to eat that much. So yeah, exercise sucks for burning calories. Instead, eat a well balanced diet and strength train to improve your performance and sculpt your body. 

Why Strength Training is a Better Exercise than Cardio For Fat Loss

Think of how long it takes you to do a round of cardio. I see some people on elliptical machines for hours. And for what? To burn 100 calories?

Not only is this something you have to do consistently every day to burn calories, but those machines are as inaccurate as a weatherman.

Additionally, as your body adapts to cardio, it burns less calories over time, which makes it harder to not only continue to lose weight, but keep it off as well. 

This is why you have those cardio bunnies that go to the gym everyday for hours to do cardio, but still look the same.

On the other hand, if you strength train 3-4 days a week for 30-60 minutes, you’ll get even better results for doing less work. 

By strength training, you’re basically teaching your body to burn calories for you. When you build muscle, you increase your metabolism and the amount of calories you burn per day. 

That said, despite my bias for strength training, I’m not saying you should never do exercises like cardio, HIIT, or circuits. They are great for your health and if you enjoy them, then who the hell am I to tell you to stop? 

My main point is that strength training is a far more effective way to burn calories long term, which makes it easier to stay lean. 

The Benefits of Strength Training For Fat Loss:

1. Improved Posture 

Practicing compound movements (squat, deadlift, overhead press) with good form not only builds strong muscles, but it helps improve your posture, balance, coordination, and mobility. In other words, you will move, feel and look better.

Additionally, many of the main compound movements are used throughout your day, so I think it is safe to say they are important. Think of picking a box up off the ground or putting a box on a shelf. You have to squat or deadlift down to pick the box up, and overhead press to put the box on a shelf.  Strength training will help make your body more efficient at these movements.

2️. You Will Build Muscle and Get Strong As F*ck

Don’t listen to people who say lifting weights makes you bulky. The only way you’ll bulk up is if you eat too many calories. Instead, you’ll get strong, build muscle, and stay lean. This is the key here because muscle shapes your body which gives you a toned look.

3️. Balances Hormones 

Hormones play an important role for building muscle, burning fat, and living a healthy life in both men and women.

Without getting too specific, your body has hormones like testosterone, growth hormone (HGH), estrogen, and cortisol that are all important for building muscle. When you strength train, these hormones balance out within your body, which becomes more important the older you get. 

Additionally, those who tend to have more muscle, are less likely to suffer from diseases because muscle strengthens your immune system. Strength training also is a great way to blow off some steam if you’re feeling stressed out. 

4️. Builds Strong Bones

Do you want to grow old, have zero balance and coordination, and break your bones every time you fall? No? I didn’t think so. 

With bigger muscles, your body needs stronger bones to support them. Strong bones become very important as you age where diseases like osteopenia and osteoporosis are more common.

So, don’t train to only improve your life now. Do it for your future self as well. 

5️. You Become a Fat Burning Machine 

The more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you will burn. 

Strength training teaches your body to burn calories for you, even when you aren’t moving. The reason for this is because muscle is expensive (in terms of calories) for your body to hold onto, therefore, requiring less effort on your part to burn calories.

Even though you may not burn that many calories during a strength training workout, the real benefit comes in the majority of hours when you’re not working out.

6️. Time efficient

A main benefit of strength training is that it doesn’t take much time. You only need to train 3-5 days a week for 30-60 minutes to have an effective workout plan. 

How fucking awesome does that sound?

As you can see, strength training has more benefits than only building muscle and getting strong. Hopefully, I persuaded you to consider strength training. If/when you decide to hop off the cardio train, below will be practical tips for you to get started on transforming your body. 

The Best Exercises For Fat Loss and Building Muscle

If you want the most bang for your buck results in terms of building muscle, strength, and losing fat, your main focus should be on compound movements.

Compound movements are exercise that work multiple muscles and body parts at the same time. Equally important, you can load a shit load of weight to them. More weight means more strength and muscle being built. Here are the main compound movements that will be discussed more in depth at the end of the article:

• Squat/Lunge
• Deadlift (hinge)
• Bench Press
• Overhead Press
• Barbell Row 

For example, during a squat your quads, hamstrings, calves, butt, back, and core are all getting worked. 

That said, isolation or single body part movements still have their place. They can bring up your weaknesses or lagging body parts by targeting them specifically. 

If you are a guy who has scrawny arms and wants to build them up, you could do plenty of bicep curls and tricep extension exercises to work them. 

On the other hand, if you are a girl who wants to build up your butt, add in glute bridges, cable kickbacks, pull throughs, etc. 

A combination of both isolation exercises and compound movements is going to give you the best results. Still, your workouts should be centered around compound movements if you want the best results. 

How Much Weight Should You Lift?

The most common mistake I see from beginners is they’re not lifting heavy enough weight.  I’m sorry, but those 5 pound dumbbells aren’t “toning your muscles”. You can’t tone a muscle. You can only build it.

To “lift heavy”, you should choose a weight that challenges your muscles and gives them a reason to grow. Whether you’re completing 5, 8, 10, 15, 20 reps, those last 2-3 reps need to be challenging. 

Of course, heavy weight will be relative to your abilities. For example, if you’re a 150 pound female, you’re probably not going to be deadlifting 135 pounds (at least not yet), so the bar is probably heavy for you. Whereas, if you are a 200 pound male, 135 pounds may be light for you. 

At the same time, you don’t want to lift so heavy where you have shit form. If you get an injury, then you won’t be able to workout and make any progress at all. 

You should lift as much weight as you can while maintaining perfect form. Once your form starts to break down you’re done. Your compound lifts should be on the lower rep range while your isolation exercises should be more on the higher end.

How to Get Stronger:

Contrary to popular belief, muscles are not being built while you work out. Instead, muscle is built when you are not working out.  Your muscles are essentially torn apart during a workout. 

When you recover and rest, your body adapts by building back up that broken muscle into bigger and stronger muscle so it is better prepared to lift more weight the next time. 

So, next time you hear someone say muscles are built by being “confused”, run away. Unfortunately, confusing the muscles doesn’t work for us average folk. 

In order to get stronger and build muscle, you must progressive overload. That is, gradually increasing the difficulty of the exercise/workout each time you workout.

When you first start lifting weights, you’ll experience “newbie gains”, where you build the most strength and muscle within the first few months. This is because you’re giving your body a new stimulus it has never seen before.  

The best way to progressive overload from the beginning is to have a rep range. Once you hit the top portion of that rep range with a certain weight, then it’s time to increase the weight 5-10 pounds. Use that new weight until you hit the top end of the rep range again and repeat the cycle. 

Unfortunately, the newbie gains eventually stop, meaning you have to find other ways to improve each week. Here are a few advanced ways to progressive overload:

• Lifting more weight than the previous week
• More reps with the same weight
• Better form with same weight
• Less rest time with same weight
• More speed with same weight
• Slower tempo with same weight
• Drop sets/Supersets/giantsets/rest pauses,etc (going past failure)
• More frequency (lifting more often)

Be sure to keep track of your progress so you know what’s working or not. Ultimately, as long as you challenge your muscles with good form and progressive overload, you’ll get great results.

The Best Rep Range For You:

While there is nothing wrong with a high rep chasing the pump style of training, you still should lift heavy for the best results. 

In fact, you can build muscle in any rep range, as long as you challenge your muscles and progressive overload. By including all rep ranges, it allows your body to get the benefits of each.

During each phase, have a goal in mind. For instance, if you want to build max strength, aim for 1-5 reps and really focus on lifting heavy and resting 3-5 minutes in between sets. For building muscle, aim for 8-12 reps while controlling the weight both up and down slowly. Lastly, if you’re more focused on endurance and stamina, than focus on 15-20 reps and short rest periods.

Setting up your fat loss exercise plan: 

You should have a structured workout program that includes all rep ranges. 

Just like you should focus on progressive overload for each workout, you should periodize or switch up your training routine every 4-12 weeks so you can continue to make progress.  Plus, it helps keep things exciting by giving you something to look forward to.

There are two ways in which I like to program for my clients. 

First, I usually program one of two splits for my clients:

For example, you can focus on one rep range each phase where most of your exercises would befall within that rep range. If each phase was 4 weeks, this is what it would look like: 

Rather than splitting each rep range between phases, you could include each rep range in each workout.  This would look something like:

That said, there is no right or wrong way to program. I would suggest trying both consistently for a few months and seeing which style you like best. Be sure to start your workout with 1-3 heavy compound movements and finish with  moderate to light weight isolation exercises of your choice.

. 

Main Compound Movements:

Now it’s time to dig into the main movements that your programs should include. 

Although using a barbell is the goal, you don’t have to start with one. Your best bet is to make sure you can safely perform the movement before progressing and adding weight. 

Each movement has regressions for you to try in order from easiest to hardest. Start with the one you can do right now with good form. When it gets too easy, move onto the next variation.

Ps. Youtube has some great video tutorials if you aren’t sure to perform an exercise. 

Squats

Squats are a fundamental movement that we first learn as baby’s. They build great lower body strength and muscle. I have a guide on how to squat here.

Deadlifts

Deadlifts come in a close second to squats while some may even put it first. Personally, I think they’re both beneficial and both will be included in your workout program. Pulling heavy ass weight from the ground not only carries over into everyday life, but it also builds an impressive back side of your body. Check out my deadlift guide here

Overhead Press

The overhead press is important for safely lifting things overhead. Learning and practicing good form on a heavy overhead press will build up a strong core and healthy shoulders. 

Bench Press

Everyone’s favorite. They don’t call monday international chest day for no reason. The bench press is a great exercise to build up your upper body muscles including your chest, shoulders, and triceps. Keep in mind that if you do them wrong, it can wreck your shoulders and elbows. 

Chin-ups

I think chin ups should be at the top of the list behind squats and deadlifts. They work your posterior chain (back of your body), which is important for posture and are a great overall back and bicep builder because you can add a lot of weight to them. 

Barbell Rows 

Many people would keep rows out of this list since deadlifts work your whole back but rows add a different dimension. You are still bent over in a hip hinge, meaning that you are isometrically working your hamstrings, glutes, and core muscles. The only difference is that you are rowing up the weight or pulling the weight towards you. This adds more of a muscle building effect by working the muscles through a fuller range of motion. Plus, you get some extra bicep work in there. 

Lunges

Lunges are a great way to focus on one leg at a time while also improving your balance and stability. 

Carry

Think of carrying groceries from your car to your house. You need good core strength and stability as well as enough grip strength to not drop them on the ground and break all of your eggs. Carries are a great way to improve your posture and balance as well. 

Final Thoughts:

If you still don’t believe me after reading this article, then I urge you to at the very least to try out strength training for a few months. If you focus on the main compound movements and getting stronger, I guarantee you will be impressed with your results.

Rather than stress about losing weight, focus on getting stronger and improving your performance. If you do, you’ll have way more fun!

I currently have client spots open, so if you’d like to apply for 1:1 online coaching to transform your body by building muscle, getting stronger, and burning fat, then apply here. 

If you like this article, then please sign up for my email list. You’ll get a free little gift if you do. If not, no worries. I appreciate you reading. 

Talk soon. -Bob