When you think of burning calories through a workout, you will probably tend to think primarily of cardiovascular exercise or perhaps HIIT. This means running long distances, or alternating short sprints and jogs to accelerate fat burning.
Either way, we don’t tend to think of weightlifting or bodybuilding workouts as being effective for fat loss and calorie burning. That’s because they’re slower paced, don’t increase the heart rate to quite the same degree and generally focus more on the breakdown of muscle and less on the burning of fat stores.
But what if you want a ripped and lean physique and you’re not interested in running long distances? There is an answer and it involves training in slightly different ways. The objective is to continue with regular weight lifting but to simultaneously increase your heart rate beyond what it would otherwise have been.
Here are some ways you can do this:
Upper, Lower Pairs
Using upper and lower pairs means supersetting. A superset of course means that you’re going to be alternating between two different exercises, either to target complimentary muscles, or to target opposite muscles.
In this unique case however, you are going to be training with supersets in order to target first the upper and then the lower body. So you might perform a set of leg presses, followed by a set of shoulder presses. Here you’ve worked all the leg muscles and then you’re following that up immediately with an exercise that will target the shoulders and the upper chest.
Why does this work well? Because it forces the body to deliver blood and oxygen first to the legs and then to the upper body. This in turn then requires more work from your cardiovascular system, thus causing you to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time. Tip: this should not be used with big compound lifts as that can cause your technique and ability to deteriorate as you tired, potentially leading to injury.
Cardio Acceleration
Cardio acceleration involves alternating bouts of weight lifting with bouts of 1-minute long (approx.) cardio. So you might perform some bench presses, jog on the spot for a minute, then perform bench presses again.
What this does is to elevate your heart rate every time it starts to lower, such that you are maintaining high levels of exertion throughout the training. This is a brutal way to work out but if you can maintain it, it’s also highly effective at building ripped, lean muscle.