As a personal trainer and boot camp owner I’ve helped countless people with their weight loss goals. I’m going to share with you some of my favourite exercises that you can use in your own workouts to breakthrough any training plateau. They are the same exercises I have used to help hundreds of people lose thousands of kilos of fat.

I’ll try and keep this simple, the best exercises for increasing muscle are also the best exercises for losing fat. All these exercises have one thing in common: they work many muscles at once and are very challenging to the body.

Scientific research and real world experience shows that total body workouts are the most effective form of training for fat loss and muscle gain. But lets go one step further…

Your results can be substantially increased by using total body exercises within a total body workout! For example, squats are one of the best exercises for building lean muscle whilst shedding unwanted fat.

So what if we took the squat and combined it with an upper body movement like a shoulder press. Now this exercise becomes unstoppable for getting you the great results. Its plain to see that by incorporating your upper and lower body into one movement youll reap even greater rewards.

Heres The Fantasy Body Equation:

more muscles worked = more calories burned + more lean muscle = more fat loss + more muscle gained

To be totally honest I have a big love hate relationship with the exercise Im about to show you. Firstly I love them because of their ability to burn unparalleled amounts of fat and secondly for their muscle building properties that keep me in great shape. On the other hand I hate them because they break me every workout (but in a good way), be warned these exercises are not for the weak minded.

So without delay, let me present my top 7 exercises for shedding fat and building lean muscle.

1. Olympic Lifts: Dumbbell or Kettlebell Cleans, Snatches, High Pulls or a combination of all.

2. Wood Chopping exercises: Dumbbells, Kettlebells, Med Balls, Bands, or Sandbags

4. Press Up Combination Exercises: Press ups with knee raise, Push up with Row, Push up with burpee etc..

6. Med Ball Snatch with Slam Combination

7. Squat combination exercises: Squat and press, Squat and row, Squat and curl etc.

If you incorporate these exercises into your workouts I guarantee you’ll see better results faster.

Train Hard!

Dan Clay
Dangerously Fit Personal Training
Personal Trainers Sydney
Boot Camp Sydney
Corporate Personal Training Sydney

With all the Xmas parties, shopping and catching up with friends and family the holiday season can be a busy time, don’t let yourself get into bad habits and fall into the trap of missing workouts.

Missing workouts and losing the lean muscle mass you worked so hard to develop is a big mistake.

The reason…

Less lean muscle equals lower metabolism, muscle accounts for the bulk of your daily calorie burning (between 65-75%).

This means that you’ll be burning less and less calories 24/7 putting you in grave danger of piling on unwanted body fat through the holiday season.

It gets worse…

The loss of strength will mean your training has regressed - a rude awakening on your first day back to training.

But…

There are a few clever strategies you can use to maintain or even increase the number of calories you burn everyday.

Use the strategies below to avoid stacking on the holiday kilos…

1. Reach Your Totals. Your body cannot differentiate between 100 squats all at once versus 100 squats performed in a day. If you honestly can’t fit in a 10-20 minute workout during the day, look for little chunks of time where you can get in a certain number of reps a day that will work your entire body.

Got a spare few minutes before the turkey has to come out of the oven, then crank out 12 press ups, 12 bodyweight rows and 15 squats. Using this system will soon add up to large number of reps by the end of the day that will burn just as many calories as if you did all the exercises at once.

Its important to recognize that this system should only be used as a backup to performing your usual exercise routine of total body workouts and interval training which are scientifically proven to burn 9 times as much fat as traditional exercise (click here for fat burning workout).

High intensity exercise and short rest periods provide the body with the best hormonal environment for muscle gain and quick fat loss.

Be sure to choose large compound exercises that work as many of your bodies major muscles in the shortest amount of time i.e press ups, chin ups, bodwight rows, squats, lunges etc.

Use the routines below to “reach your totals”, adjust the rep range according to your current level of fitness.

There’s no need for any fancy pieces of equipment, just use your bodyweight and if you have them dumbbells or barbells.

Perform the program every other day ensuring you rotate between routine 1 and routine 2, you can either reach your totals by performing one exercise at a time i.e 100 squats (with rest breaks until you reach your total) or by performing the exercises as a circuit i.e 20 press ups, 20 bodyweight rows and repeat 5 times throughout the day until you reach your total.

Reach Your Totals Holiday Program

Routine A

Press ups: 50-100 total
Body weight Squats or reverse lunges: 100-200 total
Bodyweight Rows: 50-100 total

Routines B

Walking Lunges or Hip Extensions: 100 total
Bodyweight Dips: 50-100 total
Dumbbell or Barbell rows

2. Be More Active. Technology has made us a lazy and overweight society, during these holidays be more active. If you need to go to the shops and it’s 15-20 minute walk then leave the car at home, take the stairs instead on the escalators and elevators. All these small steps add up to burning more calories at the end of the day.

3. Perform a minimum of one strength training session per week. Studies show that by performing just one strength session per week you can maintain your current level of lean muscle mass. So to be certain of maintaining your muscle mass perform at least one intense strength workout per week to avoid the dreaded regressions in fitness levels. For optimum results try to perform 3-4 total body workouts per week with interval training.

Train Hard!

Dan Clay
Dangerously Fit Personal Training
Personal Trainers Sydney
Boot Camp Sydney
Corporate Personal Training Sydney

Go to any commercial gym and you see it all the time.

People performing set after set of one exercise before moving onto the next exercise, it just takes forever!

I know, I used to be the same meathead who’d take 15 minutes to do 3 sets of 10 on the bench press…

What a waste of time!

Such diminished results!

And so…boring!

What’s the answer?

Fitness Boot Camps

Check out the video below to see some of the circuits we use (for advanced campers).

For a FREE 1 week trial to one of our Sydney Boot Camps and a FREE Quick start Fat Loss Kit, please visit www.bootcampsydney.com.au

Train hard!

Dan

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

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