You may have two goals: Build muscle and lose fat. It could be, however, that you get so caught up in the weightlifting part, that you neglect the exercises you need, to burn fat. Weightlifting can be addictive and there are many things that you can do to change it up. The aerobic part of your routine may seem boring by comparison. You may start skimping on the amount of time you spend on the treadmill or on the cycle just so you can get to the weight lifting part. Even though it is so important for fat loss, aerobic activity just seems to take so much time and draws so much energy away from what you need to weightlift.

You have to remember that to burn fat you have to have oxygen flowing. You can’t do that by doing anaerobic exercises like weightlifting. Those exercises requires that the oxygen be shut off and you use carbohydrates and protein for fuel. If you want to still burn off the fat and hurry up and show off your new muscular physique, you are going to have to dedicate a significant portion of your workout to aerobic activity.

While aerobic activity is incredibly important for burning fat, there are other reasons that you should be doing more aerobic activity. First, it is great for your heart. It strengthens it and allows more blood and oxygen to flow through. It helps give you a more balanced and healthy body and helps with overall conditioning as well. It will help with your recovery time and strengthen tendons and ligaments you need for weightlifting. It is also great for not only stretching out your muscles but will add to their flexibility which will decrease the risk of injury.

The idea of cross training is to incorporate all types of exercise into your workout and varying it consistently to keep your body from stressing one area or muscle group too much, while allowing other parts of your body to grow and develop. You may just make a habit of running on the treadmill or using stationary bikes and that can get boring. If you, however, take up tennis or racquetball or basketball or any other types of heart pumping activity, it will make it easier to build muscle and lose fat.

Try doing two or three different activities from this list a week (and try to make sure that they use different parts of your body):

Running
Cycling
Swimming
Rowing
Jumping Rope
Tennis
Stair Climbing

Think about trying some things to help stretch your body, like yoga. Yoga isn’t the only way to stretch your body but it is a great way to learn how to do it correctly. Stretching is incredibly important part of your overall fitness, as it helps you to become more flexible and supple and does a great job of setting your back straight. It isn’t just to prevent you from getting cramps in the workout. It helps to strengthen the cartilage and allows blood to flow freely. This will help your muscles achieve the growth that you most want them to have.

Also try doing circuit training. This is a great way to get all of the different muscle groups worked. When done correctly, you should be doing about 10-12 exercises using weights. You should expect to be spending about 30 seconds on each exercise or about 15 reps on each. You should only allow about 15-30 seconds rest between each. The exercises should include both upper and lower body workouts. This will not only help with the conditioning of your muscles but will also serve as a pretty good aerobic exercise. A typical circuit training workout should take about 30 minutes to complete.

So you have 4 areas to choose from in your workout. Weightlifting/anaerobic, aerobic, stretching, and circuit training. Whatever it is that you do most consistently, incorporate stretching into it and also find the time to do a couple of aerobic exercises a week, changing things up as much as possible, and use circuit training once a week. If you are able to do this, you will be able to build muscle and lose fat at a much faster pace and will find yourself in greater overall health than you ever dreamed.

There’s a site I’ve found that has lots of great short movie clips that show you simply, how to do all types of exercise. I love it. Check out Global Health and Fitness for 2 free e-books and more!

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