Your goal should be to burn the maximum number of calories in the least amount of time. Well, that is if you don’t want to spend an hour on a treadmill reading a magazine and barely breaking a sweat (and wasting your time…)

I was recently at a fitness conference where I got to rub elbows with the best in the fitness biz and of course, I pass on all the awesome-ness to you.

I asked my pal, Mike Whitfield if he’d explain what he did to lose OVER 100 POUNDS…He is the BOMB when it comes to creating metabolism boosting burst workouts.

You KNOW how I feel about HIIT or burst training. It’s the ‘be all end all’ in fat burning efficiency.

So I’ll turn it over to Mike to tell you all about his take on how to tweak your workouts for maximum fat melting….

Hey,

Mike here and I can tell just by reading Shawna’s blog that it has a community feel to it, and I’m happy to contribute to help her help others. So when she asked me to do a guest post, I was thrilled.

“So Mr. Clean, what’s this one tweak I can do to burn more calories from my workout”?  I know that’s what you’re thinking.  I will jump right into it.

You are already cranking out some awesome workouts thanks to Shawna’s programs and this blog, right?  And knowing that you are busy, I’m sure you don’t want to learn a brand new workout program, but would love to hear how you can burn more calories from your program without sacrificing a lot of time.

The answer is workout finishers.

What is a Workout Finisher?

As you probably already know, interval training is superior to steady-state cardio for fat loss.  But sometimes, even interval training can take up too much time after your workout.  Including the time to warm up and actually perform the intervals, you’re looking at 25 minutes of work.  Well, a workout finisher takes up much less time and is like intervals on caffeine.

For one thing, they don’t use any cardio machines at all.  Finishers take literally just minutes and they use multi-joint exercises with very short rest periods, allowing incomplete recovery.  This burns just as much fat if not more than interval training because they work more muscles.

For example, when you perform intervals on the bike, you are using your legs (and heart of course), but your upper body doesn’t get any of the work load.  But what if you use a workout finisher like the one below?:

The “10-4” Finisher

Do the following circuit 4 times, resting for 20 seconds between circuits.  You should perform 10 reps of each exercise for four circuits, therefore making the name of this finisher absolutely brilliant.

Prisoner Lunge Jumps (10 ea leg)

Pushups (10)

Mountain Climbers (10 ea)

DB/KB Swings (10)

The above finisher takes a little over 5 minutes, but you’re going to feel like you just worked out for hours.

Boom goes the productivity dynamite (this is one of my staple sayings – it’s trendy)

Let’s go over another one, which I’m sure Shawna will love because it involves burpees.

The tricky (and challenging) part is that the rest periods get shorter as you progress through the finisher.  It looks like this – try this at the end of your next workout:

Do the following circuit as shown:

Burpees (30 secs)

Bent over DB row (30 secs)

Rest 30 secs

Burpees (30 secs)

Pushups (30 secs)

Rest 20 secs

Burpees (30 secs)

Bicycle crunch (30 secs)

Rest 10 secs

Jump Squats (30 secs)

The End.

We hit a lot of muscle at one time, with very short rest periods (20 seconds).  That means your body will have to work hard to return to a normal state.  And what does it use to return to a normal state?  Calories… burning more calories means you lose fat even faster.

Can I Use Finishers as My Main Workout?

Finishers are designed to complement your main workout.  They are like pouring awesome sauce into your tasty protein shake.  Or if you don’t like protein shakes, finishers are like splashing hot sauce on your omelet.   If you don’t eat omelets… then it’s like putting seasoning on your fish.  If you don’t like fish, … yeah, we could do this all day.

So if you’re stuck on a weight loss plateau, want to jump start your fat loss or you want to challenge yourself mentally and physically while taking your conditioning to the next level, then incorporate finishers into your program.

And definitely keep listening to Shawna,

Mike Whitfield CFNC, CTT

There you have it ladies, a few great workout finishers for you to try at home. If you want more of Mike’s ideas, you’ll love what he has here.

This entry was posted on January 30, 2012 at 6:52 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Workouts by Shawna 2 Comments