10 Minute Fat Loss Workouts & Diets

Just couple of days, I got a call from Shiraz Hussain from England about an article (with the same title as this blog post) I posted on other website. He was bit concerned (I think more than just a bit) about overworking or overloading with this workout.

After I checked out the article and his questions, I decided I should Write about this article and workout in more detail (and I also noticed a mistake from my part, sorry guys). Here’s a gist of the article.

1. Lift Heavy. Every weight you lift, no matter be it dumb bells, bar bells, kettlebells or sandbags. You have to get into habit of lifting heavy.

2. Low Reps High Sets : Keep your reps in 3-5 (I’d prefer around 3). Keep your sets around 5-8 but only if you are lifting heavy..

Monday/Wednesday/Friday

Chest : Incline bench press, dumbbell fly ( 3 reps X 8 sets)

Back : Pull ups (3 X 8 sets)

Shoulders : Arnold press or Seated dumbbell press (3 X 8 sets)

Biceps : barbell curls ( 3 X 8 sets)

Triceps : Dips and pulley pushdown (3 X 8 sets)

Lower : Squat, Dead lift and good mornings (3 X 8 sets )

Now first let me handle the mistake I did. Good morning is more of a lower back exercise than lower body exercise (though it also work on hamstrings).

Shiraz Question : My question is for chest do I have to do 8 sets on incline bench press and 8 sets on dumbell flys (which makes 16 sets in total) or do I do combination of both to make 8 sets in total.

My answer was, you can always pick how your body feels. Though I’d recommend you to start with 1 exercise per body part, But if you think it’s not much of exercise. Add another exercise. But from what I’ve seen lifting heavy for 24 reps is not that easy.

Though You are doing almost same number of reps per exercise. The load you lift is different. There are 2 basic difference in workouts.

1. You are lifting heavy in my workout (3 reps and 8 sets).

2. Rest time is around 1–3 minutes between sets.

In 555, you’ll be lifting really light weights. With heavy weights with 555, there’s chance you’d screw up form and can injure yourself. For people who are reading this casually, let me tell you, I survived a really close call while doing bench press.

The only problem with this workout is that it takes lot of time to finish it.

So How I came about this workout?

You see this workout was modeled on 555 Workout. 555 workout is about doing only 5 exercises, 5 sets for 5 reps. You chose 1 exercise for each body part ideally Upper, Core, Middle, Arm and back, Not like my good friend who used to chose 5 exercise like Bicep, Triceps, Forearms, Chest and Biceps again (LOL).

Anyways at that time (about 10 years ago) I was obsessed with strength, so this workout wasn’t enough for me. I decided to up things a little bit. At that time I only knew you have to lift heavy to build strength. Which basically means lifting more weights and adding more exercise. For 5 days a week I was doing full body workouts with 8 exercises, 3 reps and 6–7 sets. It’s kind of funny I used to treat first 2 sets as a warm up for exercise but lift almost the same amount of weight.

It was fun for a while, then I started reading & experimenting with workouts. At that time I felt that 555 workout is for basic fitness (or bodybuilding). So I used this model as basic strength training for myself and other guys I worked with.

Granted this workout will not help you enter strongman competition but you’d be far stronger than your average gym goers.

Oh btw, Today I don’t think 555 as a basic fitness workout for people. You know why? because today you won’t find people who do Pull ups, Good mornings, Squat and Deadlift these days in Gym. These days nobody do these exercises. These are hard core exercises which differentiate Men from boys. Trust me.

On last note. If you want to know how to Do deadlifts/squats/good mornings properly. You should check out Elite Fitness System’s Videos. Just enter “Elite fitness systems” in google, you’ll get to their website.

Additionally You can also buy Mark Rippetoe’s book called “Starting Strength” from amazon.

Categories: Article of the Day, Strength Training
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This week’s question comes from a college student…

“This is great informational website. I am college student. I was wondering how can I start working out without Gym membership and weights. – Dave, Georgetown”

Hey Dave,

Most of my workouts I share do not use expensive weights or need access to gym. You can always start from bodyweight exercises, build a sandbag or try to check out few garage sales around your place to get some weights second hand.

I’d ask you to start with a basic workout like

Push Up

Squat

Parallel bar dips (or chair dips)

Handstand pushup

Check this article For a upper body workout example without weights

For lower body workout you can try one of my sandbag workouts.

Monday : Upper Body

Tuesday: Lower body

Wednesday: Take a walk in the evening, or do something for fun (basketball, tennis or any other outdoor sport).

Thursday: Full body workout (take a pick from any of my routines)

Friday: Rest

Saturday: Full body workout + Tabata workout (check articles in this blog)

Sunday : Rest

Now above break up will help you lose weight, build strength, endurance, stamina and what not. They are really like a magic pill but of course they are hard to swallow (err to do). As most of my routines are high intensity routines, they do not take more than 10–15 minutes (rarely 20 minutes). You’d wish you never met me.

Categories: Workouts, Your Weight loss Questions
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No Cardio! Interval Training for Fat Burning

You don’t necessarily have to perform any type of cardiovascular exercise to lose body fat, which maybe a surprise to some people.

I know natural body builders that have gone on stage and finished in the top three at contests that don’t do regular cardio.

They just have done nothing but the resistance training and their diet, so we certainly don’t have to do that long, slow cardio, but when I put together my programs I use very short interval training workouts and those things work as good or better, most of the time better than long, slow cardio workouts that are often twice as long.

So you save time and you get more results. With the interval training, this can be done by anybody, including beginners.

A beginner, their interval training would go like this, if you regularly walk on a treadmill for 3.5 miles per hour or you use a bike at a consistent pace for whatever that is, then you’re just going to work slightly harder than that regular pace for a shorter period of time, so for a minute.

That person on the treadmill instead of walking at 3.5 miles per hour for 30 minutes straight, they would do their warm-up and then do their first interval, their work interval, which is a short period of exercise done at a harder than normal pace, they would do it at 3.8 miles per hour.

It’s not a huge jump, but it’s something a beginner can do and they’ll do that for a minute. Then they’re decrease their exercise intensity all the way down to 3.0 miles per hour, so going lower than their regular cardio intensity. I say when you do your interval training that you want to do your work interval at 8 or 9 out of 10 intensity level and your recovery interval down as a 3 out of 10 intensity level.

An analogy for that is your regular cardio would be a 6 out of 10, so you’re going to jump up the intensity and then you’re gong to take the intensity way down, so a minute hard, a minute easy and do that anywhere from 3-6 times, if you’re a beginner just try it 3 times, then finish with a cool down.

As you become more advanced, you know, intermediate level, you might be running at 7 miles per hour for a minute, decreasing down to a walk at 3.0, so always going down to that very low pace. That’s a big mistake that most people make is they have that cardio mindset and they’ll only go from 7 miles per hour down to 6 miles per hour.

That’s now how you do my type of interval training, because I want you to be able to maintain your work interval at the highest possible intensity you can do for a minute. If you only went down to 6 miles per hour, then you wouldn’t be able to do more quality interval up at 7 miles per hour, so you drop way down during your recovery.

For an advanced person, they might run it 10 or 11 miles per hour for a minute and again, decrease all the way down to a walk at 3 miles per hour and then go back up. Again, six intervals is about all you need. You don’t need to do internal training for 45 minutes because I think you lose the quality of training if you try and go that long.

That’s how I do my interval training. I encourage people to stay active on their off days, so we only do three turbulence training workouts in a week so we’re not in the gym everyday or in the home gym everyday.

On your other days when you’re not supposed to be in the gym, stay active for at least half an hour, whether it’s walking the dog or playing a sport, basically living life, that’s why I call it the Fat Loss Lifestyle because it’s three workouts and you get more days off to live life and run your errands and spend time with your family and you don’t have to be a slave to the gym.

Get a free sample fat burning workout at http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Categories: Article of the Day, Weight Loss Tips
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For Women : How to achieve Ideal Body Fat %?

For women, The ideal would be around 21-25% (lower than you’d come in athletes range). If you go over 32%, you’ll fall into obese range. Though there are lots of trainers who would argue that this is not ideal range (for them its around 25-30). But if you want good lean body then that’s not the range you want to be fit in.

So here I am going to share an article which will help you get that ideal shape.

5 Secrets to Burning Stubborn Female Body Fat

If you are sick of not losing stubborn female body fat but you are doing endless hours of cardio, "classes", and light weight exercises, then you must discover these 5 secrets to burn stubborn female belly fat.

Some of my favorite clients have been burnt out moms and busy businesswomen who still made time to exercise but weren’t getting any results. The scale wasn’t budging, their pants were still tight, and none of the body parts seemed to be tightening up.

In fact, I still remember one conversation I had with my number one client of all time, Annie, a mom who did lots of cardio and light weights before she came to train with me.

After one of our first sessions, we sat down at the Starbucks across the street from the gym on a beautiful spring morning, her with a coffee and me with a Green Tea, and I shared with her the 5 secrets to burning stubborn female fat and losing inches from her tummy and thighs.

Annie couldn’t believe that there was any "secrets" about burning fat. She’d been reading all the workout magazines and talked to all her running gal pals about losing weight, and they all said the same thing - Do more cardio and eat less fat. So Annie was calling me out, and saying I wouldn’t be able to tell her anything she didn’t know.

Of course, she didn’t realize who she was talking to.

So I told her straight up, depending on cardio only to lose inches is a dead- end game. It just won’t happen. And then I let her in on my 5 secrets.

You ready?

Secret #1 - Use Interval Training, Not Cardio

At the time of our discussion, the Australian research study showing interval training to be more effective than cardio for fat loss in women had not yet been published. However, I knew from another study (from back in the 1990’s) and from experience that nothing beats interval training for maximum results in minimum time.

Annie was skeptical. She had been doing cardio for years, and at first she lost some weight, but then she hit a plateau.

Her assumption was that she simply needed to do more. But she was already running 4 hours per week. Where was there time to do more?

So I turned her on to Interval Training.

And that was the start of her love affair with short burst exercise. Within weeks her arms were sculpted, just in time for a party where she wore a sleeveless dress. She came in on Monday morning after the party weekend and told me that all the women were talking about her and her arms! All thanks to interval training, and this next little secret…

Secret #2 - Nutrition is the #1 Factor for Fat Loss

Annie liked Starbucks, not only for the coffee, but for the carbohydrates they had behind the counter. But once I told her how many calories and sugar were in those snacks, she knew she was in trouble.

"But Craig," she said in her sweet Southern drawl (she was originally from down south but moved to Toronto with her family), "I need a lot of carbohydrates for my running."

A classic excuse!

Now I can’t be too hard on Annie, because ALL runners love to use running to justify their excessive sugar, carbohydrate, and calorie intake. But that doesn’t help you lose inches. In fact, all these carbohydrates and extra calories are keeping the inches glued to your waist, hips, and thighs.

The fastest way to get them off is to limit your carbohydrate intake to almost entirely fruits and vegetables, and to eliminate processed carbohydrates from a bag or a box.

If you want more fat burning carbohydrate ideas, you’ll be thrilled with Dr. Chris Mohr’s safe, effective Fat Loss Nutrition Guidelines.

So addressing Annie’s "cardio and diet" issues were two of the biggest factors in getting her inches off, but the next tip was the real key behind her sculpted arms.

Secret #3 - Use Bodyweight Exercise to Boost Metabolism and Sculpt Your Body

Before Annie came to me, she was doing light dumbbell exercises, but none of her efforts were making an impact on her body. It was a waste of her time.

Until I showed her the power of bodyweight exercises. And not just the same old, same old, either. I showed her dozens of different pushups, total body ab exercises, and leg sculpting moves that she had never tried before. And even though we worked out at a gym, she could have done all of these workouts at home.

And thanks to her ability to do 15 close grip pushups, she was the one turning heads in her sleeveless dress at that party. But I bet you want to know more about the total body ab exercises I just mentioned. Annie sure did when I first mentioned them.

Secret #4 - Crunches Are Useless - But Total Body Ab Exercises Work!

At the end of our first workout, Annie was experiencing simultaneous fatigue and exhilaration. She’d never performed over half of the exercises in her workout before, and she loved that no little pink dumbbells were involved.

And as we moved into the abdominal exercise portion, she looked at me as if I had two heads while I rhymed off some of our options.

Mountain Climbers, Spiderman Climbs, Stability Ball Jackknives, Side Planks, Cross-Body Mountain Climbers, Chops, and Stability Ball Rollouts were all knew to her. And knew to her abs too! And that’s why she made so much progress.

No more 500-crunch workouts for Annie. Instead, she would get more results in much less time, and with less than 50 repetitions of her new total body ab exercises.

Secret #5 - When You Use Weights, Do Less Reps

I get really fired up about this one, as Annie would agree from first hand experience. As we sat on the patio at that Starbucks, well after we finished our drinks, I was still quoting research studies and success stories to her, telling her why it’s a downright shame that women have been mislead about how to do strength training.

For decades, women were told to use light weights and high reps to tone their muscles. But do you know anyone who has had success with that? And none of the women I’ve trained ever had a trainer show them how to do pushups or chinups. It was so sad that they had wasted thousands of dollars on trainers who did not respect their physical ability.

Ooops, I told you this gets me fired up. So I convinced Annie that in future sessions we’d use dumbbells, and do only 8 reps per set to get the biggest metabolism boost in the least amount of time. And that’s what we did. In fact, she eventually worked up to 35 pound dumbbells in the dumbbell chest press exercise, and still had TINY, TONED arms.

No woman gets big and bulky on bodyweight exercises and a few dumbell exercises. Not if she follows my 5 secrets.

Strength and interval workouts are based on proven scientific methods for burning belly fat and increasing your metabolism, PLUS…the strength and interval workouts have been used by thousands of women.

So use bodyweight strength and interval workouts you can do in the comfort of your own home to burn stubborn female body fat.

Get a FREE sample body fat burning workout at http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Categories: Article of the Day, Weight Loss Tips
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When you want to lose weight, you don’t want temporary effect. You want permanent effects so that the fat never comes back to your body. So in this article I’ll help you with losing & then managing your weight loss.

The scary thing about fat or weight gain is that its easy to get into bad habits and gain weight. It has happened to me and quite a few people I know. Losing weight the 2nd time was an uphill battle.

Lose weight fast with my special workouts.

You know, if your goal is losing weight, then you are better off staying away from typical gym rat’s workout. Stay away from Cardio on Treadmill. The best way takes less than 20 minutes and can be done anywhere. It’s called Tabata workouts.

It’s an interval training protocol developed by Dr Izumi Tabata in Japan. The training protocol states the interval of 20 second workout followed by 10 second rest and doing this 8 times.

I use 2-3 exercises depending on my mood and time limit. For example My favorite Exercises are bodyweight squat, lunges and push-ups.

So here’s your tabata workout.

Tabata Protocol : 20 second workout - 10 second rest.

20 second Squat - 10 second Rest X 8 times

20 Second push up - 10 second rest X 8 times.

20 Second Lunge - 10 seconds rest X 8 Times

You can finish this workout in under 15 minutes. I suggest doing this workout at least 4 days a week. Rest of 2 days You can take basic strength training exercises (which is out of the scope for this article). 1 Day for active Rest.

Permanent Weight Loss - What to Do After You’ve Achieved Your Goal

Now when you have achieved your goal, you are supposed to keep it off forever. This can be really hard for people. In celebration of their new found self, they over indulge and get fat again. Here are few tips for you to keep fat forever.

1. Do my special 10 minute workouts daily ( or you can use the above workout and modify into 10 minute workout).

2. Don’t stray off the proper nutrition line.

3. Keep a picture of your old self and your new self close to your mirror.

4. Create a new goal to get into single digit bodyfat percentage Just for fun.

Image training : Fat People Think Fat.

Always think of yourself as a thin, strong(muscular) person. Even if you have lost weight, you’ll still be thinking from a fat person’s prespective. Your self image will be of a fat person. Which is where you have to change yourself. Keep an thin image in your mind all the time. Now I know this point requires more explanation which I’ll do it in future post (If for some reason I forget, just email me).

Categories: Fat Loss Newsletter
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If you are one of those people who want to burn excess pounds and tighten few lose ends, then all of your attention should be in reading this article. I understand that you might not have an hour on daily basis for working out and I am fine with that.

I believe for most people who aren’t interested in building body should not follow traditional gym workouts or workouts which you can find in Muscle & fitness magazines. So without boring you into details here is the workout.

Step 1 : Warm up and Stretch

Spend 5 minutes doing warm ups. Don’t do few of those waist twist, ankle twist. Warm up has a reason to be called as a warm up. You should be properly prepared for workout.

Step 2 : My Favorite Workout

Use these 3 exercises.

1. Squat (bodyweight) :20 Squat with 10 second rest

2. Push up :20 push up with 10 second rest

3. Lunges : 20 lunges (10 with each leg) with 10 second rest.

You’ll do one set of Squats with rest and then move on to 2nd exercise push up and then to 3rd exercise lunges. This is 1 Complete set.

You are supposed to finish 5 sets of these. There is No rest between sets. If you want try to take rest for 1 minute only after when 2 sets are finished.

Do you know what’s common between All the Fat Burning workouts?

1. Time Factor : You don’t spend an hour doing these workouts. Its not like you are going for 40 minute treadmill run and then 20 minutes on stationary bike. Most Fat burning workouts end up in 20 min Maximum.

2. Effort Factor : If you think you have time to network, chat with your buddy with these workouts, you are in wrong place. The effort here you put is real.

3. Interval Training: Interval training is key here. Because of high Intensity and effort factor, you can’t spend time in max zone. So you’ll be taking active breaks. Often intervals of 20 - 10 is applied. 20 Second of workout with 10 second of rest. Sometimes we can change these intervals depending on our goal.

4. Not for weak heart : Like I said intensity, Effort and Interval is key determining factor in these workouts. So they are not meant for obese people, or people with weak heart or weak attitude.

Categories: Workout of the Day, Workouts
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You know I hate getting colds. I hate the whole body pain, headache that comes with it. But I hate most is you can’t concentrate on anything. Whenever I catch cold, it used to take me 3 days to recover. This 3 day cycle was killing…

I used to have sinus problems when I was kid. dust, mites anything that can allergy will get me for 3 day cycle.  Though it is cured now by using pranayma breathing techniques.

But after doing some research I was able to find a way to get rid of this cold cycle in 24 hrs or less…

The Secret is getting More vitamin C. Now I have read in school textbooks that it increases immunity but never tried it. Now I took Amla powder(Indian Gooseberry) 3 times till I got rid of cold. You can also take some vitamin C supplements which you can find in health stores around yourself.

Now you’ll not miss your workouts, feel awfully bad when you are out with cold. I thought this would be interesting for my blog readers.

Categories: Article of the Day
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It doesn’t matter which part of the world you are in, you’ll see some guy (or same gal) running on treadmill for 40 minutes. According to trainers this kind of training will burn higher part of calories from fat. But here’s a key thing about all this. This is the least effective training out there and those trainer who are still preaching about them are doing dis-service to you.

The Naked truth about Fat burning Zone

They are right about burning higher fat percentages. But with Higher intensity workouts (like HIIT), You burn more over all calories in the whole day. With higher intensity exercises your metabolism is elevated even when you are not working out.

Studies have shown that every pound of muscle will burn 35-50 calorie per day, whereas 1 pound of fat burns 7-10 calories. So Guess what if you replace 10 pounds of your fat with 10 pounds of muscle you’ll start burning extra 350-500 calories per day. Your goal should be adding muscle mass to your body.

Fat Burning Workouts.

My favorite methods of burning fat are Interval training, strength training and your typical weight training. So lets discuss Top 3 exercises for fat loss.

1. Sprint Training

For example, If I have to use sprints as a good training workout. I would use something like this…

100 m sprint, 50 m Jog - X 10 times.

Or may be 400 m run, 200 m jog X 10 times. This is intense routine, do not attempt if you have not tried the 100 m version.

2. Sandbag training

Again its inexpensive training, all you need is a duffle bag full of sand (around 50-70 pounds) and for next 10 minutes, throw, carry, lift and be like a kid with this training tool. This sandbag will kick your butt.

3. Shadow boxing

Martial artists and boxers understand the power of shadow boxings. They have been using it for years to train themselves and condition their bodies. If you are new to this and engage in 3, 3 min rounds of shadow boxing, you might pass out. The idea is to punch your invisible opponent down. Punch fast, punch hard and you are set to lose weight in less than 10 minutes.

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Q I’m almost 14 and i weigh 139 and i’m 5′2 1/2″ tall. I’ve tried excercising and eating healthier foods but it just doesnt work for me. so i’ve seen tons of weight loss supplement ads & commercials and i want to know which ONE is the BEST and faster that helps eating less with or without excersise.

So please what is the best and fastest working over-the-counter weight loss supplement at a low cost?

__________________________________________

Answer : Weight loss supplements? they don’t work at all. No matter what kind of results they claim or science they have. They don’t work. But I have better option for you.

Cut down on your carbs. Eat carbs only when you deserve to (only after exercise). Fruits and veggies are excluded from this rule.

Eat lots of protien. Find natural sources and then add some protein supplements.

Workout 5 days a week. Spend 2 days with High Intensity training. You can chose any of my workout here. Spend 3 days with full body workout (do not split body parts).

If you just do this, you’ll lose weight like nobody’s business.

Categories: Diet, Your Weight loss Questions
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I might be the first person (ex fitness trainer) to claim that fad diet works. You must have read tons of article on internet, magazines about how they don’t work. Let me tell you, atkins, south beach or whatever new fad diet is, they work. They work perfectly. But people takes them too far.

So why these diet still don’t work?

If your resolution to lose weight shakes, it’s all over. A simple cheat diet can end up binge eating. There are many reasons why they don’t work. But I think it comes down to people not accepting the chances from deep down inside their heart.

To succeed you need to form good habits. If you can succeed sticking to diet 90%+ times then you’ll see results. That means, if you are eating 5 times a day, you need to stick to the diet plan for 32 meals for a week. Only then you’ll get 1 cheat meal free (even then No Binge eating, you’ll get your favorite dessert).

I focus mostly on low carb diet plans with reloading of carbs every few days. Here are few ideas for this article.

1. Cut down your carbs upto 80-100 gms per day.

2. Completely cut down your starch, sugar.

3. Reload carbs when you feel like you are getting weaker in your workouts.

4. Eat lot of protein and Fat in your normal diet.

5. Stop drinking all the colas, soft drinks and alcohol especially bear.

Categories: Diet
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