In my previous post “How Can I Get Slim Smart?” I talked about the first steps to losing weight the right way. In this lesson, I will give you top 9 weight loss training tips, so your journey in the world of slimness will be smooth and effective.

Before You Start Weight Loss Journey

Before we talk about the tips, I want to remind you of the importance of medical supervision. Before you get serious about strength and cardio exercises, be sure to consult with your therapist and tell him about your plans to do strength and cardio exercises. If you do not have any health problems, you can safely start exercising.

If there are health problems, it is essential to do all the necessary procedures and treatment, and only after that, start training. In any case, a physician should indicate what you can and can not do. That is an obligatory part of any sports activity. A trainer is not responsible for your health if you do not comply with doctor’s recommendations.

Weight Loss Training Tips

And here you have to understand that there are no right and special exercises that will instantly make you slim. It is not the exercises that make you thin – it is all about the right approach to performing these exercises.

You can use any available exercises with any available equipment. But apply these tips, and you are guaranteed to lose weight with those exercises.

So, here are nine most essential tips and recommendations.

Following each of these individually already make your workouts more effective. But your exercises will be most effective if you use ALL of these tips. They are, by the way, not that complicated, and the only difficulty is to remember them.

? Frequent Change Of Training Programs

You have already heard more than once that the human body can adapt very quickly to any physical load. And the result of this adaptation is always a decrease in the body’s response to loads. That is, the longer you train on any program, the lower is the return. It applies not only to building muscles but also to weight loss.

That is why you should change your training program every 3-4 weeks, so there is no adaptation for slowing down your progress.

Swap exercises, change their form, include new ones. Make sure that the new training program’s load a little bit higher than in the previous one.

? Optimal Duration Of Each Workout

You’ve probably heard the advice that a strength training session should not be longer than one hour. This advice is valuable when it comes to building muscle mass. During a workout, the body is increasing levels of catabolic hormones, which in large quantities can harm your muscles by making them smaller. But fat-burning training is by no means about building muscle! It is a catabolic process, where a higher catabolic hormone number is a necessity.

Therefore, the optimal duration of a fat-burning workout is one and a half or even two hours. More than that and you risk draining your body’s resources too much.

? Exercise More Often

Workouts for weight loss should be frequent enough. For effective weight loss, you must work out almost daily. It is again due to the processes of catabolism, which are intensified by daily exercise. You cannot grow muscles from daily workouts, but fat will go away.

The ideal number of workouts per week is five or six. In the remaining one or two days, try to rest and gain strength – this is important.

? Combination Of Strength And Cardio Training

There are many opinions about this combination. Also, there are many thoughts about the value of strength exercises for weight loss. Some people lose weight quite well, thanks to strength training. Others (and those are many more) have had good results with cardio workouts (such as running, group aerobic exercise, dancing, etc.).

However, it is the combination of strength and cardio training that gives the fastest and most impressive results.

Just alternate days of strength training and days of cardio, and everything will work out!

? Training Load Progression

It is also called the progressive overload principle. The essence of progression is simple. To improve your body, you need to keep it from adapting to the load by increasing workout intensity, for example, by increasing working weights in each workout (usually from 2 to 10 lbs, depending on the exercise). There are also other ways to raise the intensity: shortening pauses between sets, increasing the number of sets and reps, specific training principles like supersets, etc.

Progression should permeate your workouts from the first to the last exercise. Cardio training should also follow this rule. Aim to gradually increase the speed of running, the duration of cardio.

? Optimal Weights In Strenght Training

There is an opinion that if strength training aim is to lose weight and improve muscle tone, you must take a very light weight and lift it many, many times.

I assure you that this is not true!

Such workouts will lead to nothing but overexertion. You will not lose weight that way. This kind of training does not cause the acceleration of metabolism and growth of EPOC. And this is the most significant part of the weight loss program. The essence of such body response is that the body continues to expend energy body fat at an increased rate even between workouts.

The load will be sufficient for metabolism stimulation only if you take quite heavy weights – able to lift them no more than 12 to 20 times per one set. A larger number of repetitions indicates that the weight is too light and will not lead to a body response. And, consequently, there will be no rapid weight loss.

? The Right Set Of Exercises For Weight Loss

Firstly, there should be plenty of exercises in a strength training session for weight loss (about 10-15).

Secondly, the chosen exercises should involve as many muscles as possible. The best way to meet this requirement is so-called fundamental strength exercises used in bodybuilding to increase strength and muscle volume, such as a bench press, squats with a barbell, deadlift, all kinds of pull-ups.

Also very helpful will be exercises from weightlifting, kettlebell lifting, and their specific effective combinations.

It is essential to understand that adaptation of the body occurs not only to the weights but also to specific exercise’s forms of movement. So, you will need to be creative to increase the effectiveness of the drills. After all, your body is already used to standard drills and can not respond to them strongly enough, no matter what weights you use.

Uncommon exercise is an essential factor in stimulating catabolic processes driven by stress hormones. The fancier the drills and their combinations, the stronger the catabolism will be. It is a fact!

? The Right Choice Of Equipment

I’m sure it’s no secret to you that the equipment you use determines your results.

The right equipment must meet some simple requirements:
✅ It should allow you to raise the load by increasing resistance.
✅ It should allow you to load large muscle masses, not just individual small muscle areas. And the load must be multi-plane – it must not lie in one place, as it is on most training apparatus.
✅ The equipment must be accessible and comfortable.

The most suitable for fat-burning strength training are barbells, collapsible dumbbells, and a set of weights. It is these ‘tools‘ that should form the basis of the training equipment. For example, I know more than 500 exercises with collapsible dumbbells alone, and half of them are perfect for fat-burning training. But if you like training machines, you should do no more than 10-15% of all exercises on them.

? Load The Whole Body At Once

You can organize muscle training in two different ways.

One is to divide the body into several areas and work out on separate days. It is very convenient as the workouts are short, and you can give a heavy load to the muscles selected. This division of training into days by muscle groups is called a split. Split is great for gaining muscle mass, but not for weight loss.

To provide the most powerful response of the body load as many muscles as possible during each workout. That is why fat-burning training must involve all the largest muscle groups by the selection of appropriate exercises.

Let’s Summarize

1. Change the training program every 3-4 weeks.

2. Your workout should last 1.5-2 hours.

3. train 5-6 times a week.

4. Combine strength and cardio training for maximum weight loss.

5. Constantly increase: the working weights in the exercises, the number of repetitions, speed in cardio training.

6. Use weights you can lift 12-20 times. No lower.

7. Use exercises that involve multiple muscles.

8. Use mostly dumbbells, barbell, and weights.

9. Load the whole body during each training session.

That concludes our lesson. Thank you for your attention. Have a successful weight loss! ?