This 10 second exercise trick is something you can easily implement and lose fat up to 9x faster. Most people mess this up!
by Dr. Kareem Samhouri - CSCS, HFS
Neuro Metabolic Fitness & Rehab Expert
Author of the popular program: Abs Strength Guide
You need to know how long to rest when exercising, or you might lose most of the effect. This drives me crazy; make sure you read to the bottom of this page so you can avoid hurting your own results.
My name is Dr. Kareem and I’m here to help you lose fat as fast as possible
.
Rest intervals are equally, if not more important, than work intervals when it comes to working out for fat loss. This is where most people either ruin their results or risk injury while working out. If you think about ‘intensity’ like ‘sprinting’, than you’ll realize you can only be so intense for a short period of time.
Do you keep the same speed for an entire 100 meter dash?
No, actually, you slow down before/around halfway. Isn’t that crazy to think about? In less than just 10 seconds, Olympic athletes have already started to decelerate.
As it turns out, your fat loss workouts
yield the greatest results when you stop and rest at the precise moment you notice yourself slowing down. After this point, there are diminishing fat loss returns and increasing risk of injury.
Rest is a suggestion when you see it in a program, not a recipe. You need to monitor your own body in order to best understand when to rest. Likewise, it’s equally important that you know when to return to exercise.
Fundamentally, returning to exercise should be when your muscles feel loose again and your breathing has returned to normal. Expect your heart rate to continue to be elevated slightly, as you’re probably still walking or moving around during your rest breaks. Plus, you’re in a hyper-stimulated environment if you’re working out in a gym, so the increased sensory input tends to increase heart rate slightly, as well.
You see, the key to fat loss is rest.
Think about it this way... if you don’t rest properly, you’ll never have the intensity you need to truly ‘shock’ your body into losing fat. It’s all about hitting your body with an intensity it’s never felt before, and forcing it to change. That’s what fat loss is all about: evolution.
Evolve your body into a stronger, more capable being. Evolve your lungs into greater capacity, and evolve your heart to no longer respond to what was once ‘intense.’
It’s amazing to see what your body is capable of if you just push it a bit harder each time you work out. Endurance isn’t about pushing a bit harder each time; it’s about pushing a bit longer.
Endurance and fat loss are not the same thing.
The good news is that you can actually improve endurance by doing this
form of fat loss training, but not the other way around. In fact, it’s been suggested in various resources that 20 minutes of high-intensity physical activity can yield up to 2 hours of cardiovascular effect.
However, 2 hours of cardio does not stand a chance of putting on muscle or burning fat rapidly.
Instead, in cardio, you’re doing wonderful things for your body, but you’re teaching it how to adapt to an increased demand over time. In other words, you’re increasing your efficiency with exercise. This is not necessarily good for fat loss per se...
Fat loss is NOT about increasing your efficiency with exercise; it’s about ‘shocking’ your body with exercise.
Scare the fat away :-)
Think about fat loss as exercise intensity tolerance training.
We’re increasing your VO2 max, or your maximum oxygen uptake. By constantly pushing the envelope and going a bit harder each time, your body will adapt and let you go a level beyond. Instead of your body adapting to keeping the same low level muscle contraction going for awhile, we’re asking it to adapt to repeated, intense demands, that are interrupted by precise rest breaks.
Sprinters are lean. Marathon runners are thin and in shape. If you want to get rid of fat, be the sprinter. Learn how to rest, and you shall gain much more intensity from your workout program.
I’ve been testing rest periods and work intervals, program sequencing of exercises to allow your body to go just a bit harder each time, and overall workout timing in order to provide you with the greatest result with the least effort. I’ve figured out a formula that has allowed me to lose 1 pound for every 11.86 minutes of exercise I did, and it only takes 10 minutes per day.
I’d like to share this plan with you, so I’ve prepared a video that explains everything, and it's yours FREE:
Thanks so much for your time.
Wishing you incredible fat loss success,
Dr. Kareem
Other popular articles by Dr. Kareem:
The 7 WORST exercises to NEVER do
3 Major fat loss mistakes (are you making these mistakes?)