No matter how hard you work your abs, if you have a layer of fat covering them, nobody can see your hard work. While spot exercises create strong underlying muscles, when you lose weight, you lose it all over your body, not just in one spot. So finding the cardio that burns belly fat the best is actually finding one that burns the most calories.
Cardio may not be the best way to lose belly fat.
The truth is, the best fat burner is a combination of strength training and HIIT—high intensity resistance training. Strength training builds muscles as it burns calories and muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does. HIIT isn’t a type of exercise, but a way of doing any exercise. It bounces between going at top intensity for a short period, such as 30 seconds to two minutes and then dropping back to a recovery intensity for the same amount of time or longer. You can use this technique with any cardio workout.
Take it easy and go walking or running, but modify it to a HIIT workout.
You probably put walking on the back burner, thinking it’s far too easy to burn tons of calories, but what about power walking. In fact, you can set your calorie burning ovens on high by making it a HIIT workout and adjusting the intensity. Not only does HIIT burn more calories in a shorter period, it burns extra calories longer. It increases your metabolism longer after you’ve finished exercising.
Bicycling can also be a HIIT workout and burn fat quickly.
No matter what type of exercise you do, including bicycling, using the HIIT technique helps burn more fat and that includes more belly—visceral—fat. In fact, some studies show that people doing HIIT workouts three times a week for a 20-minute session, lost not only fat, but inches around their waist, indicating belly fat disappeared, too. Burning off the visceral fat is not only good to flatten your stomach, but also important to your health. It’s the most dangerous type of fat to your health.
- If you need to lose belly fat—which translates to losing weight—but have bad joints, try an elliptical workout. It’s a good cardio workout that doesn’t pound your joints like jogging and other types of exercise.
- Remember to make your daily life more active to burn fat. You can run up and down stairs to burn calories and those burnt calories mean fat loss, which can also cause you to lose belly fat.
- Create circuit training to burn belly fat. You can create a workout that burns fat more quickly. Just shorten the time between exercises to maximize the results.
- No matter what type of exercise you do, what you eat is important. In fact, to get rid of belly fat, eating healthy should be your first step, with exercise forming the second.
For more information, contact us today at Body Sculptors Personal Training