Want to know why your workouts stink, don’t work and make you fat?! Well, here you go.
Reason #1: You work out way too much.
Your workouts are analogous to digging and refilling a hole. The workout creates the ‘hole’. It’s the stimulus for your muscle to change with the goal of burning more fat. But, you need time to refill that hole.
It takes 7-14 days for your muscle to fully recover after a workout.
Lesson #1: work out less to see real results. I lift weights once a week and do a very short sprint workout once a week. The days off are when my body burns lots of fat and keeps me lean.
Reason #2: Too much cardio
Plenty of researchhas shown that cardio training neither builds muscle or burns significant fat. Go to the gym; notice all the lean people are in the weight section, not the cardio. Short, intense training and long term rest is the only strategy that has been shown to burn fat.
Lesson #2: Do very short and intense cardio workouts. Think 5-10 minutes to exhaustion.
Reason #3: Your diet is likely worse than you think.
Be honest with yourself. Most people I consult about weight loss have a hard time admitting their diet could be better. What is the junk food you need to cut out? Be honest. My best advice here is to ignore the old “everything in moderation” approach. Some foods and drinks will just keep you overweight.
Lesson #3: Be honest and start eliminating some junk today.
Reason #4: Your workouts are too easy.
You must, must, must train your muscles harder than they are used to. You need to lift heavy weights. An appropriate dose of weight lifting means you slowing lift a weight for 45-90 seconds. If you’ve chosen the right weight and lifted slowly you will reach the point where you can no longer move the weight. Then you are done. Once your muscle is stimulated to failure that’s all you need. Time to rest for a week. Lesson #4: Train much harder. Pick a heavier weight and slowly control it.
Reason #5: You don’t know how to recover.
There are several things you must do to recover from a workout and burn fat. Many of these strategies are about reducing stress so you can have a proper hormonal response to the exercise and burn fat. It can take days for your muscles to recover from a workout. The real growth and fat burning happens between workouts.
Reason #6: You don’t have a training strategy.
You need to have a plan going into your workouts and track what you’re doing. I rarely see anyone in the gym tracking their workouts. Each workout must push your body beyond what it did the previous workout. You need to give your body a reason to adapt and burn more fat. Have an expert like myself create a training program for you and follow it.
Lesson #6: Record your workouts.