Cardio Training

Are you trying to lean and tone your full body? If so, you must do full body strength exercises like the squat. You will get more fat burn doing shorter workouts--if you use more full body strength exercises.


Some form of squat exercise should be a part of every strength workout you do. The squat will help you build more muscle, burn more fat and speed up your metabolism. The squat will not injure you if you do the exercise correctly.

Learn how to do the barbell squat exercise to prevent injury.

If your fitness goal is lean and tone, you will lose inches from your waist, hips, neck, arms, legs, etc. and your body fat will decrease by doing full body strength exercises. You should take these measurements at least once a week to measure your progress.

Don't worry about the weigh scale at first. Since muscle weighs more than fat, your weight might even go up a little at first. But you will be on your way to acheiving PERMANENT WEIGHT LOSS AND FAT LOSS because your lean muscle mass will gradually replace your burned fat mass. And this will help speed up your metabolism.

There is probably no other exercise that has a greater impact on your body's musclebuilding, metabolism and energy expenditure (deadlift is also a great exercise).

This means your legs (especially quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes), abdominals and lower back are targeted. Even your arms and shoulders will feel the effects of the exercise.

I would recommend doing squats without machines or weight belts. This will force you to learn how to stabilize your body without artificial support. And, there's no reason to "max out" on squats. There are other ways to calculate your one-rep max on the squat exercise.

If you are not able to perform squats with barbell or dumbbell weights because of injury, then start with bodyweight squats.

There are many variations of the squat exercise. Some are: barbell squats, dumbbell squats, bodyweight squats (pictured above), one-legged squats, Bulgarian split squats, side squats, prisoner squats, sumo squats, sissy squats, hack squats and front squats.

They are all good to work into your routine at some point. Keep in mind that one-legged exercises are more intense than two-legged exercises.

Here are 3 reasons to do squats and burn more fat:

1. The squat works the major muscle groups. To recruit more muscle fibers during workouts and improve your fat loss success, focus more on multi-joint or compound exercises like the squat.

Compound exercises will help you burn more fat because of the intensity of working large muscle groups in your body. You will also burn more calories and fat after your workout.

2. You will tone your bulky and shapely fast twitch muscle fibers better with the squat exercise. I am talking mainly about your butt, hips and thighs. Everyone wants to shape these areas.

3. Work your core with squats. Research shows that the abdominal muscles are engaged more when doing squats than they are doing many of the more popular ab exercises.

Your lower back will also get quite a workout. If you do the exercise correctly, you won't injure your low back.

The are many other reasons to do the squat exercise. Include some type of squat in every strength training workout.

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