Since I’m an Algonquin personal trainer, I want to let you in on a simple rule that my premier fitness solutions trainers follow when we’re training someone for fat loss: We want to elevate your heart rate and keep it up throughout most of the workout.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to accomplish this is by having you do exercises that work multiple muscle groups at once. The more muscle groups you work at once, the more calories you will burn and the greater the metabolic demand on your body. Boosting the metabolic cost of exercise is key to changing the shape of your body. As a personal trainer in algonquin, Il, this strategy has been key to getting clients to burn tons of fat and get into shape fast.

One thing that many people do that drives me crazy, they spend the first 10 -15 minutes of their (30 or 60minute) workout warming up on a bike or treadmill at a very low intensity. Even worse is when I’m in the gym and I see algonquin personal trainers put their clients on the treadmill for the first 10 minutes of the workout. What a waste of time and money. That valuable 10 minutes should be used on exercises that will warm up all of your muscles and joints at a much higher intensity (so you burn more fat and calories) then simply walking on a treadmill. Any amount of time you spend on low-intensity exercise is keeping you from doing another exercise that will burn more fat and calories. If your algonquin personal trainer puts you on the treadmill for the first 10-15 minutes of your workout it may be time to run for the hills. Conversly, if your algonquin personal trainer puts you through a dynamic warm-up that consists of various movement patterns with a medicine ball that is fast, fun, effective and most importantly burns a ton of calories, it is likely you have found an Algonquin personal fitness trainer that knows what he/she is doing.

If you don’t have access to a medicine ball or don’t know how to effectively warm-up with one, grab a jump rope and start jumping for a few minutes. This is a simple yet very effective way to warm-up the entire body for several reasons. First, there is no way you can cheat. Second, it works your upper and lower body. Third, it burns a ton of calories and will kick your metabolism into high gear. Doing a few rounds of jump rope for 3 minutes followed by a minute rest will deliver much better results than walking on a treadmill at a slow pace for 20 or 30 minutes.

So basically, the point I’m trying to get across is start your workout with a full body exercise like rope jumping, squat thrusts, jumping jacks, or anything that works your entire body and gets your heart rate up quickly.

Once the warm-up is complete, it’s time to get into exercise selection. If your goal is to lose fat, tone, and get back into your skinny jeans, like most of our clients, please don’t waste your time sitting on machines or doing single joint exercises like the leg extension, bicep curls, etc. The most effective exercises to lose fat and tone, (which is what most people want) are ones that work your upper and lower body at the same time.

Let’s look at the squat for example. It works your legs, back and core. However if we add a simple press to the movement it will also challenge your arms and shoulders too. We can even take that a step further, turning the squat into a lunge and perform the overhead press one arm at a time. This is a favorite of many of our Algonquin personal training clients. Anytime, you take an exercise and make it a single limb variation it will make each rep more challenging as your core has to work harder and typically more muscle groups are activated.

So when fat loss is the goal, focus on exercises that work you entire body and if you can turn them into single-limb exercises that will increase the effectiveness of each.

Author Bio: Jamie Philippi is a Personal Trainer and Co-Founder of Premier Fitness Solutions in Algonquin – They specialize in helping Clients Get the Body They Deserve In the Time They Actually Have through Targeted Total Body Training. To learn more about how you can get into incredible shape visit our website at http://www.premierfitnessolutions.com

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: algonquin, personal, trainer, personal training, trainers, algonquin personal trainer,