Articles & Press - Optimum Health & Fitness

Personal Trainer Neil Hywel Jones tells us his best effective ways to burn calories and help get our bodies beach ready with tried and tested proven strategies!

Effective Ways to Burn Calories and Blast Fat

Neil says: Some effective ways to burn off these excess calories would be to utilize large muscle groups such as gluteus/legs and back muscles in the form of multi joint action resistance training.

These include squats, lunges, dead lifts and step ups, combining upper lower core integrated body activities such as squat press, lunge pull, step up press.

If you don't have access to a gym then you could always use a park bench or low wall and medicine ball for a step up press, and resistance bands for squat pulls. Lunges, squats etc need no equipment and shall be executed anywhere.

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Some other effective ways that I use to blast away calories would be high intensity, short duration metabolic work such medicine ball slams, battle rope drills, plyo metric work on benches, kettle bell drills, BOSU training, and body weight exercises which require no equipment. The TRX is one of my favourite all around tools that is also great for metabolic conditioning.

Best Ways To Blast Fat

Some great forms of cardio I advise my clients to use are interval conditioning, such as 4 minutes of effort and 1 minute of interval for a duration of 20-60 minutes.

Now:

These are done on treadmills or outdoors. Another cardio option would be treadmill hikes, this is especially effective for those who suffer from back or knee pain. Set the treadmill at 10-15 incline and a speed of 2.5-4.5 and hike for 20- 60 minutes.

But here's the kicker:

Make this activity more effective avoid holding the frontside of the treadmill for long periods, and get your arms moving. Alternatively, just hike up a real hill.

Another highly effective way that burns fat and calories which is often overlooked, is to simply consume a healthy breakfast at the start of each day. Skipping breakfast will actually lower your metabolism and make it more difficult for our bodies to burn fat.

A healthy low fat/sugar, low G.I. meal is the right way to begin each day, this will help reduce body fat levels and prevent us from over consuming on high calorie foods.

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Remember any activity that you do will burn calories. The average size person may burn 4-8 calories per minute at a steady walking pace. This is a calculation I use to motivate my clients.

Good news:

Resistance training helps us preserve/build lean tissue and burn fat/calories, thus making it harder for one to store unwanted body fat.

Another thing to keep in mind, please don't let the weather stop you from keeping active. Either wear suitable clothing for outdoors or find some indoor activities.