Mojabeng Dorcas Senekal
DID you know that you can burn fat, build muscle and get a great workout using just your body weight? Do body weight circuits where you complete one exercise after the other without stopping, this way you are both building muscle and getting a cardiovascular workout. Combine that with a good diet and there, you have yourself an effective plan to follow. Body weight circuits work extremely well because all of the exercises performed utilize multiple muscle groups, they get your heart rate pumping and burn a lot of calories. Circuit training burns more calories than interval training, which burns a lot more calories than steady cardio. So, if you are trying to lose weight and are spending hours doing cardio on the treadmill, you are wasting a lot of your time.
In a circuit routine, all exercises are performed without a break in between. You finish all the exercises in the circuit and you do it again, you can do it twice and if you aren’t too tired then you can go for the third run through. If you feel you are too tired, take a break otherwise you will just end up doing the exercises incorrectly which is just a waste of time and breathe. First things first, you always warm up before you start, get your heart rate elevated and muscles warm otherwise you are begging for an injury. How to warm up; jump rope, pedal on a stationary bike, or even a moving one, jog up and down your stairs. When your warm up is done, then the routine;
- 25 body weight squats
- 15 push ups
- 25 walking lunges
- 15 dumbbell rows (you can use a 5 litre bottle full of water)
- 30 second plank
- 35 jumping jacks
When the work out is complete, make sure you stretch to rebuild your muscles. Do your routine four times a week, in between, let your muscles rest because they are built when at recovery. This is a good workout plan for you, but without a complementing diet then you are trying to build a house on quicksand. Remember, your diet is 80 percent of your success.