The fat burning workout you need now is not the one you used to do! In fact if you’re spending an hour doing low slow work, or even intervals for that long, you’re messaging your body to store fat and your potentially losing muscle. There is a negative cascade of hormone responses that occurs when you’re not exercising optimally. That fat burning workout might be a fat storing workout. Whoa!?
If you’ve been exercising and putting more and more time in, you probably already feel this. Exercise may not give you the “rush” it used to, or you’re feeling flat during and after. You aren’t really looking forward to it or feeling recovered from it.
If you haven’t started exercising yet, lucky you! Let’s start a fat burning workout plan together right away.
First, it’s no what you think! It used to be we’d all go climb on the cardio. Then we’d move to another piece of cardio and do some more. Or maybe you were a class junkie and you’d go to two in a row or do the Stairmaster after class for a little more calorie burning. Sound familiar? (Trust me, I’ve made this mistake myself so I know!)
The secret after 50 to a true fat burning workout isn’t even cardio. You’ll need some, you have a heart, after all. But you need so much less than we ever used to think. We need strength training. We’ve got to keep those muscles, or in some cases, get a little muscle back that we’ve lost. (Muscle development peaks at age 25. If we aren’t specifically doing something to make it stick around we lose that… muscle takes our metabolism with it.)
How Does A Fat Burning Workout Feel?
Better. You feel more energy after. Even during. I won’t say you’re going to love going as hard as you can for 30 seconds or a minute, or going to fatigue. That’s only because I don’t know you! Here’s what a Flipping 50 Cafe Member said this morning: I love this kind of workout: it makes me feel strong!
This workout is going to focus on strength training with weights. I know I see and love some of my colleagues who use body weight only. I’ll tell you why I don’t love that for those of us over 50.
We have a real and more urgent need to work on posture, especially the upper back. Unless you can do pull ups that’s impossible to do with body weight.
We need to do a little less pushing. With body weight, push ups are a staple. They don’t serve our imbalances very well.
You’ll find it hard to fatigue with body weight in all exercises. Your lower body is where your gold mine for fat burning workouts hangs out! You need to reach fatigue using those muscles (quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes) though in order to change your change and burn fat. It might take hundreds of reps to fatigue with body weight only and yet your joints are going to complain before you get there.
Enter weight training. Here are the fat burning workout commandments:
- Choose major muscle group exercises above all others.
- Include small muscle groups if you have time but later, not sooner in your workout.
- Pick weights that make you reach fatigue. Beginners do more reps with a little lighter weight (20-25). Intermediate exercisers increase the weight a bit so you can do fewer reps (15-ish). If you’ve got a strong foundation, 10 or fewer reps if it’s safe for your joints, will change that metabolism and make it a true fat burning workout.
- You train only the good ones: good form, always good form!
These are 10 exercises you do a minute each. The goal is quality, not quantity, so no rapid movements, the slower you go the more your muscles have to do the work. If you fatigue before a minute just rest or switch early. If you don’t fatigue that may be a sign you need a heavier weight next time. Alternatively you can do each exercise for a specific number of reps. This comes from one of the workouts in The Whole Flip. If you prefer a video to put a personal trainer in your living room, you can learn more here.
Are you doing a fat burning workout with weights at home or at the gym?
Thanks for reading and sharing your comments. Stop by and connect with us in the Flipping 50 Facebook community.
