Perfectly timed fat loss (Part 2)

Exercises vary in effectiveness depending on when you perform them. Match the right workout with the right time for maximum burning potential.

Barbell squat

Muscles worked glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves, abs

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and rest a barbell on the back of your shoulders.

Bend at the kness and hips, stop when your thighs are parallel to the ground, then rise up. Testosterone – your chief fat-burning hormone – is raised when multiple-joint lifts are done at 85-95% of your maximum.

Clean and jerk

Muscles worked lower back, glutes, hamstrings, quads, arms

This move is the fat-burning pièce de résistanceas it uses pretty much every muscle you own. Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Squat down and grip a barbell with an overhand grip.

Pull the bar up to the front of your shoulders, drop into a quarter squat and press it over your head. Lower to the start. This is great for increasing production of your muscle-building growth hormones.

Incline bench dumbbell chest press

Muscles worked upper chest, triceps, shoulders

Own-bodyweight exercises have their place but weights burn far more calories. Lie on an incline bench set to a 45 degree angle. Hold a dumbbell in each hand above your chest.

Lower the weights to your sides then straighten your arms. Setting an incline bench promotes the greatest chest and shoulder muscle activation.

Turkish get-up

Muscles worked quads, hamstrings, lower back, glutes, abs

The sound you make when performing this move is the sound of calories burning. Lie face-up with your legs straight and hold a weight in your left hand with a locked elbow.

Stand up, pushing off the ground with your hand. Keep the weight above your head. Then lie back down, still holding the weight above you. Complex resistance moves like this obliterate the most calories.

Perfectly timed fat loss (Part 1)

Exercises vary in effectiveness depending on when you perform them. Match the right workout with the right time for maximum burning potential

The clock governs everything, your ability to burn fat included. To get the most from your workout you need to be in the right place at the right time, performing the right exercise. By doing just one of these workouts – each burning 500 calories – every day for a week, you’ll burn that excess body fat. It’s all in the timing.

7-9am: Attack your fat stores early

Advantage: stamina

Don’t hit the snooze button – you need to be out of bed nice and early to maximise your morning fat-burn. You’re up to 7% weaker when you wake, so it’s best to go for a long bout of steady-state cardio over more strenuous interval or weight sessions. Perform any one of the exercises below, maintaining a speed that’s about 65% of your maximum effort. A constant pace ensures you don’t tap out your energy reserves and can train for the set time-frame. You’ll be in and out with a 500-calorie deficit before breakfast.

Stationary bike 34 minutes
Elliptical trainer 36 minutes
Rower 43 minutes
Run 35 minutes

12-2pm: Mix it up on your lunch break

Advantage: increased lung capacity

You’re awake but you still won’t have reached your peak strength by midday. Your body’s aerobic capacity will have increased by 4%, so a mixture of intervals and resistance training is ideal for this time of day. Do your cardio first.

Interval training Warm up for 4 minutes. Then sprint for 30 seconds, rest for 20 seconds, then go again. Go 7 times.
Weight training Do the exercises on the next post after another, resting for 1 minute between sets. Do 3 sets of 12 repetitions

5-7pm: Lift heavy when you're working late

Advantage: maximum strength

You may feel tired after a day’s work, but you’re at your strongest now. So go for a pure weights session. Perform a set of six reps with a weight heavy enough that you’re unable to keep lifting after the last rep. Research found it will burn more calories post-training than doing 12 reps of a lighter weight.

Weight training Do the exercises on the next post after another, resting for 1 minute between sets. Do 4 sets of 6 repetitions

Jason Momoa’s Conan the Barbarian Workout

Try the 110-rep per exercise routine the Hollywood star used to pack on 20lbs of muscle and step into Arnie's shoes to play Conan the Barbarian. You’ll build a barbaric amount of muscle and slash away fat.

Build barbarian muscle

To get a body like a barbarian, you need to lift more than a broadsword. But achieving Jason Momoa’s physique doesn’t require you to bivvy down in a corner of your local gym for months on end. The Conan the Barbarian star’s colossal physique was built through simple 30-minute, extremely-high-rep sessions.

If you really want to test yourself, try to gradually increase the load you use each day you perform the workout. Pick a heavy weight and it will get you shredded and build a lot of muscle. Fat slayed. Muscle plateaus conquered. 

Instructions

Each workout should take 30 minutes. Pick three from the following five exercises and take a day's rest between each session. Try to use a weight around two thirds of the maximum load you can lift in one rep.

Squats
Shoulder Presses
Incline Bench Presses
Cable Crosses
Pull-Ups

Sets, reps and rest

With your first move, perform 7 reps. Then take a 7-second rest. Then perform another 7 reps. Take another 7-second rest. Continue in this way until you have completed 7 sets of 7 reps. Rest for 30 seconds. Then do a 6-rep round: 6 sets of 6 reps with 6-seconds rest between each set. Finish with a 5-rep round to bring the total rep count for that exercise to 110. Take a breath. Then do the whole thing again with two more exercises. 

The ultimate beach-body workout

Get ripped for the beach in six weeks with this simple routine

Get a beach body in your lunch hour

Will you be ready to unveil your abs when the summer sun finally emerges? The workouts are relatively short so you should be able to squeeze them into a lunch hour if necessary. They are also grouped by movement rather than muscle group, so if the gym is busy you can quickly choose another exercise. Whether you're vacationing, staycationing, or just want a great new routine, read on for your foolproof plan to a stacked summer.

The routine

This routine is designed to strip away body fat, define your chest, abs, shoulders and arms, as well as sending your strength level soaring. Combine it with a decent diet for six weeks and you'll have a beach-ready body to be proud of.

Monday: Resistance Workout 1
Tuesday: Cardio (30-45 minutes steady-state cardio at 80-85% maximum heart rate – eg. cycling or running)
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Resistance Workout 2
Friday: Cardio (20-30 minutes of interval training)
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Freestyle cardio

Pragmatic performance

The way this routine works is that you can use any exercise that fits the bill. For example, with the horizontal row you can substitute any horizontal rowing movement (e.g. seated row, dumbbell row, inverted bodyweight row). So if the bench-press station, for example, is busy, you can just use the machine press or dum-bell press instead. If all the horizontal pressing equipment is busy, you can just do press-ups instead. Feel free to change the days to suit your schedule, but try to leave at least two days between the resistance workouts.

How do you do supersets?

Using the first superset in Resistance Workout 1 as an example...

1. Start with the bench press (or any horizontal pushing exercise) and do 6-8 repetitions.
2. Then, move straight to the dumbbell row (or any horizontal pulling exercise) and perform another 6-8 repetitions.
3. Rest for 60-90 seconds.
4. Repeat for the prescribed number of sets.

You'll be using supersets to increase the intensity of your workout. These involve moving quickly from one exercise to another, with little or no rest between. Rather than resting between sets, you perform an exercise for another muscle group. Compared to workouts that involve resting for several minutes between sets, supersets allow you to get twice as much work done in the same amount of time.

Resistance workout 1

Deadlift 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions (rest for 2 minutes between sets)

SUPERSET 1
4 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Horizontal push (e.g. bench press)
Horizontal pull (e.g. dumb-bell row)

SUPERSET 2
2 sets x 12-15 repetitions
Vertical pull (e.g. lat pulldown)
Vertical push (e.g. overhead press)

SUPERSET 3
2 sets x 12-15 repetitions
Face Pulls
Bent Over Lateral Raise

CORE
2-3 sets x 8-10 repetitions
Ball rollouts

2-3 sets x 12-15 repetitions
Reverse Ab Curl

Resistance workout 2

Barbell squat 3 sets x 12-15 repetitions (rest for 60-90 seconds between sets)

SUPERSET 1
4 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Vertical pull (e.g. pull-up)
Vertical push (e.g. seated dumbbell press)

SUPERSET 2
2 sets x 12-15 repetitions
Horizontal push (e.g. incline dumbbell press)
Horizontal pull (e.g. seated cable row)

SUPERSET 3
3 sets x 8-10 repetitions
Incline Dumbbell Curl
Triceps Pressdown

CORE
2-3 sets x 8-10 repetitions
Woodchopper

2-3 sets x 12-15 repetitions
Swiss Ball Crunch

With both workouts, rest for 2 minutes after completing the low rep (6-8) sets and for 1 minute after completing the high rep (8-10 and 12-15) sets.

Finally, for the 'freestyle' cardio on Sunday, you could go for a long walk, play some sport or just do the same thing as you did in the week. It's up to you.
Happy honing.

Burn fat, build muscle

Achieve the impossible – lose weight while adding muscle

Burn fat, build muscle

Like most blokes, you've probably been reminded by your other half of men's inability to multi-task. Totally untrue. It's often said that building muscle and losing fat are mutually exclusive. To lose body fat you need to eat less and to add muscle you have to eat more, so it can seem downright impossible to have these two goals. Read on to find out how to tighten your sleeves and loosen your jeans.

How it works

You'll alternate between weeks of heavy weights and low repetitions to build muscle and low weights and high repetitions to burn fat. This strategy elevates your metabolism by conditioning your muscles to have both endurance and strength. Combine these efforts with the "Get ripped" meal plan and you'll expose your body to the variables you need to hit your seemingly contradictory goals and realise the overall objective: looking your absolute best.

Get muscle workout

Do this low-repetition, high-weights programme for weeks 1,3,5,7,9. Rest for 60-90 seconds between sets to make sure you're fully recovered and constantly increase the weights you're lifting. 

EXERCISES                     

Monday: chest and abs

Bar-bell bench press               
Sets: 5
Rep: 12,8,6,4,12
Incline dumb-bell press
Sets: 4
Reps: 8,6,6,6
Flat flye
Sets: 4
Reps: 8,6,6,6
Dips
Sets: 4
Reps: 8,6,6,6
Weighted sit-up
Sets: 5
Reps: 10               
Standing cable crunch  
Sets: 4
Reps: 8           

Tuesday: legs

Bar-bell squats   
Sets: 5
Reps: 12,10,8,8,6
Dumb-bell lunge               
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,12,12,12
Leg press                   
Sets: 4
Reps: 10,8,6,6
Leg extension          
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,12,12,12
Bar-bell straight leg deadlift   
Sets: 4  
Reps: 12,8,6,6
Lying leg curl               
Sets: 4
Reps:8,8,8,8
Donkey calf raise
Sets: 5
Reps: 12,10,10,8,12

Wednesday: arms

Underhand pull-ups
Sets: 5
Reps: 10
Alternating bicep curl   
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,8,8,8
EZ bar curl      
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,8,6,6
Lying triceps extension          
Sets: 5      
Reps: 10,8,8,8
Cable pushdown
Sets: 4
Reps: 8,6,6,6
Dumb-bell overhead extension   
Sets: 4
Reps: 8,6,6,6

Thursday

Rest day

Friday: shoulders and abs

Seated dumb-bell shoulder press     
Sets: 5
Reps: 12,10,8,8,6
Bent-over lateral raises      
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,8,8,8
Front raise                  
Sets: 4
Reps: 10,8,8,8
Lateral raise      
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,10,10,10
Smith machine upright row  
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,8,8,8
Medicine ball Russian twist      
Sets: 4
Reps: 10,8,8,8
Weighted leg raise  
Sets: 4
Reps: 12,10,10,10

Saturday

Rest day

Sunday

Rest day or a light cardio day

Do 10 minutes each on the rowing machine, bike and elliptical cross trainer.

Get ripped workout

Do this high-repetition programme for weeks 2,4,6,8,10 and rest for no more than 15-20 seconds between sets to keep your heart pumping and sweat dripping.

EXERCISES

Monday: back and biceps

Lat pull-down  
Sets: 5
Reps: 12
Bar-bell bent-over rows   
Sets: 4
Reps: 12
Seated rows   
Sets: 4
Reps: 15
Standing one arm cable row      
Sets: 4
Reps: 15
Standing bar-bell curl       
Sets: 5
Reps: 12
EZ bar curl          
Sets: 4
Reps: 12
Cable rope curl              
Sets: 4       
Reps: 20

Tuesday: legs and abs

Smith machine front squat          
Sets:  5      
Reps: 12
Dumb-bell straight leg deadlift  
Sets: 4
Reps: 12
Leg press               
Sets: 4
Reps: 15
Lying leg curls      
Sets: 4
Reps: 15
Leg extension           
Sets: 4
Reps: 15
Calf raises          
Sets: 5
Reps: 20
V-up                       
Sets: 4
Reps: 20
Roll-out  
Sets: 4
Reps: 15

Wednesday:

cardio machines

Do intervals on the treadmill for 40 minutes: sprint for 40 seconds, then jog for 60 seconds to recover.

Thursday: chest and abs

Bar-bell bench press       
Sets: 5
Reps: 12
Smith Machine incline press       
Sets: 4      
Reps: 12
Smith Machine decline press       
Sets: 4      
Reps: 15
Pull-over                  
Sets: 4      
Reps: 12
Leg raises                  
Sets: 5      
Reps: 20
Cable woodchop               
Sets: 4      
Reps: 15

Friday: shoulders and triceps

Clean and jerk              
Sets: 5       
Reps; 12
Dumb-bell lateral raise           
Sets: 4      
Reps: 12
Dumb-bell front raise          
Sets: 4      
Reps: 15
Bent-over lateral raise           
Sets: 4      
Reps: 15
Dumb-bell upright row          
Sets: 4       
Reps: 12
Cable pushdown              
Sets: 4      
Reps: 20
Kickback                  
Sets: 4      
Reps: 12
Bench dip               
Sets: 4      
Reps: 12

Saturday

Rest day

Sunday:

Cardio machines
Do intervals on the rower for 30 minutes: sprint for 40 seconds, then recover for 30 seconds at a slower pace.