http://ironworkfitness.com/fat-loss-in-fifteen-minutes/Fat Loss in Fifteen Minutes
So if you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I advocate big, compound movements for everything from muscle building to fat loss. You want to boost your Testosterone? You want to build muscle? You want to burn fat? The answer is always the same. Big, compound lifts done with heavy ass weight. So when the question is “How do I burn fat in the least amount of time?” it should come as no surprise that the answer is pretty much the same thing. This article is about kettlebell density training.
Whenever I design a workout program, there are 3 basic components that make up a complete workout. Mobility drills, strength training, and energy system development. Energy system development is what you probably think of as cardio. This is the part where you actually break a sweat and develop some real athletic ability. After all, what good is it to be able to squat twice your bodyweight if you get gassed out climbing a flight of stairs.
One fun way to develop your energy system is to simply focus on work capacity, which is a fancy way of saying how much work can you do in a set amount of time. It’s related to cardio, and yet it’s not. When you think of cardio, you probably think of keeping your heart rate at a set number, let’s say your 220 minus your age times .65. And if you were walking on a treadmill, that probably translates to a concrete number, maybe 6.0mph at an incline of 1.0. With me so far?
So jogging 1.5 miles in 15 minutes translates to a heart rate of 160. Well if 1.5 miles is 5000 steps (just for this article anyway), what if we take away the heart rate component? Instead of trying to maintain a heart rate, let’s just say we try to run as fast as we can for 15 minutes and take the most steps we can in 15 minutes? Well now the treadmill isn’t really the best too because we are going to be increasing and decreasing the speed to try and maximize the amount of work we can do, which is basically regulated with our heart rate. Turns out there is a better way.
Let’s throw out all this nonsense about heart rate for a minute and just focus on total work performed. If we just let our perceived exertion be our guide now we can focus on total work done. You work hard until you need rest, and continue when your able. Turns out, you can regulate your exertion pretty easily if you just intuitively work until you need a break and resume when you’re able. And it’s the best way to do interval training, which is the best way to burn fat! Instead of going by some arbitrary Hi-Lo scheme, you go balls out until you need a break and then go again! But a treadmill kind of sucks for this kind of training. What if we could replicate this kind of work inside of a gym?
Turns out a kettlebell is probably the best kind of tool for this kind of training. If you can focus on driving up a certain number in a certain amount of time, you can pretty much guarantee fat loss. If we take out a block of time and try to perform the maximum amount of work/repetitions in that set amount of time, you can get a cardio workout and a strength workout in the same block of time! That means more muscle and wayyyyy less fat. In 15 minutes! This is the magic of density training.
If we take two exercises that use large amounts of muscle, and set up a time like 15 minutes, and then the protocol is to perform the maximum number of repetitions of these two exercises in 15 minutes, you can max out your heart rate repeatedly, burning fat and improving sports performance and body composition at the same time. After all, how many sports do you know that consist of maintaining a steady pace of 20 minutes? Not very many at all.
For this workout, we’re gonna focus on 2 big exercises, kettlebell swings and squat thrusts. Set up a timer for 15 minutes and perform the maximum number of repetitions possible. You can rest as needed. Swing the kettlebell as many times as you can until your form starts to deteriorate or you can’t take the burning anymore. Then rest an appropriate amount of time. Repeat for squat thrusts. Keep track of the TOTAL REPS because the next time you perform this workout, your goal will be to improve TOTAL REPS. It might help to think of doing the maximum number of mini-sets of a number like 8 or 10. So if you complete 15 sets of 12, you did a total of 180 swings. The next time you workout, your goal might be 15 sets of 13, or 16 sets of 12. What ever you can do to increase total reps while keeping your time constant.
This kind of workout will improve your cardio conditioning because in between sets, your heart is pounding to help you recover. Since you will be repeatedly overloading your respiratory system, your glycogen stores will deplete rapidly and you will build muscle and burn fat at the same time. Let me warn you right now that this kind of training isn’t easy. You get out what you put into it and if you want to see fat drop fast, you have to be willing to work hard. It’s real easy to set up a timer and leisurely bang out 80-90 swings and call it a day. That doesn’t cut it.
If you put in 15 minutes of hard work, your results will reflect the intensity of your workout. This kind of scheme can be done with different exercises, but for fat loss, it works best with big movements. I like to pair up 2-4 exercises and see how many I can perform in and then try to break that record. Your exercise choice should reflect your fitness level. For example, a beginner might choose 10 kettlebell swings and 10 mountain climbers done for maximum reps. An advanced trainee might do 4 pull-ups, 8 kettlebell snatches, and 8 burpees for maximum sets. Just try and keep the proportions in check and get after it.
:-o tummy no feel too good
