Exercises, Reps, and how 3% isn't going to help you lose fat

Interesting things are happening in my life lately and you're
going to hear all about them in the next week or so. I'm going
to need your support and advice.

I wanted to do a little more critical thinking today as far as
exercises and reps.

Last week I talked about the fat burning zone and the benefits of
interval training and my email box was flooded with emails about
interval training and how jogging has caused so many joint problems.

Great to hear from you and keep 'em coming.

Ok let's get on with it...

When choosing exercises for your program you need to consider what
exercises are going to be most beneficial for your goals.

What you want to do during your workouts is use as much muscle as
possible. That means multi-joint exercises (squats, bench, pullups,
deadlifts, rows, presses) are best because they will work more
muscle then a single joint exercise (bicep curl, tricep kickback).

Take into consideration the size of your muscles as well. For
example, doing squats are far more beneficial then bicep curls. Why?

Well your biceps are roughly only 3% of your entire muscle on your
body. Doing the squat works over 50% of your total muscle.

So when you're thinking from a fat loss perspective, working out
your bigger muscles will build you an overall greater lean muscle
growth. The result of that is a higher metabolism, which is of
course, what you want because you'll burn a higher amount of fat
throughout the day.

Do I have my clients perform bicep curls? A little bit. Most of
time we'll stick to 3-6 sets a week and actually push it kind of
heavy for 6-10 reps.

Same thing applies with tricep specific exercises, EXCEPT we'll do
10-15 reps because I've found that the stress put on the elbow joints
doing a heavier weight under 10 reps increases the risk of injury by
a fair bit.

Generally we'll stick between 6-12 reps for most exercises but I'm
going to mention that in the next email.

hope that helps,

Cheers,

Dan Grant
www.dangrantfitness.com

PS - Remember, look at the pros and cons of what you're doing. If
it's increasing the risk of injury then re-evaluate. That's why
i rarely do long cardio with my clients and it's also the reason
we stick with over 10 reps for lying tricep extensions.