If your goal is to lose fat and build lean muscle alternating exercises between different body parts and keeping the rest periods short is the best way to go.

Performing straight sets of a strength exercise one after another with long rest periods is a thing of the past (unless your body builder or power lifter).

The problem with performing straight sets one after another is it’s an extremely inefficient way to order your exercises.

In the majority of commercial gyms you’ll often see someone perform a set of 10 reps of an exercise – let’s say bench press. They crank out a set of 10, have a chat with a mate, go to the water bubbler, watch some MTV, stretch, have a wipe down with a towel and then moll back to the bench for the 2nd set. They could spend up to 15 minutes just to perform 3 sets of one exercise! 4 exercises will take an hour.

A much more efficient way to train is utilizing the alternating set format. Here you’ll perform an exercise, have a short rest, perform another non competing exercise, have a short rest, perform another non competing exercise and so forth.

Using this format allows you to train more than one area of the body, gives each muscle more time to recover between sets and allows you to fit more exercises in per workout, the result – more fat loss.

There are several different ways to perform alternating sets…

Tri-sets: Alternate between three different exercises (e.g. push, pull, and lower body such as push-ups, rows, and lunges)

Supersets: Alternate between two different non-competing exercises (e.g. upper body and lower body such as push-ups and lunges)

Circuits: Alternate between four or more different exercises

Though all these options are good, I believe circuit training is by far the best option.

Here’s one of my favourite circuits to help demonstrate why this template is so efficient.

It’s called the 50-10 Five bodyweight Circuit: Alternate between 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest for all five exercises in the following 5 minute circuit:

1. Push ups

2. Squats

3. Step ups

4. Chin-ups

5. Reverse crunches

Perform this bodyweight circuit up to four times for a 20 minute total body fat-melting workout.

As you can see in the same 15 minutes it would have taken to perform 3 sets of bench press you would have fitted in a staggering 15 different exercises.

Circuit training is an excellent way to simultaneously burn fat and build lean muscle.

This style of training also creates the optimal hormonal environment for fat loss by exercising at maximal intensity separated with short rest periods.

In the upcoming weeks Ill be showing you some great videos of circuits we use at our boot camps.

Train hard!

Dan

Dangerously Fit Personal Training
Personal Training Sydney
Boot Camp Fitness Sydney
Corporate Fitness Sydney