Burning Calories Is Super Easy
Whenever you perform a “workout,” there are a number of possible objectives that you might be trying to achieve.
You might wish to become stronger, faster, more flexible, more agile, more muscular, or a better technician in your chosen sport. You might be rehabilitating an injury or “prehabbing” to avoid a future injury. You might even use a workout as a stress-buster after a hectic day at work.
But of all the possible outcomes you might be seeking, burning calories is the easiest.
After all, all you’ve got to do is move until you become tired, and then move some more.
It doesn’t really matter what the movement entails, although difficult movement will make you tired faster.
Nor does it matter how many exercises you do, how you do them, or in what order they appear in the workout.
It makes no differnce how many reps you do, or how many sets, or how long you rest between sets (although if you rest too long, your caloric burn will gradually diminish)
No need to worry about knee alignment, scapular control, lumbar posture, or breathing technique. As long as you keep moving, you’ll be burning calories
When you’re only concerned about burning calories, programming is a snap. In fact, periodization becomes a non-concern. Paralysis by analysis? Not in your case! It’s literally impossible to make an error, as long as what you’re doing makes you tired, and preferably as fast as possible. Here are a few quick examples written off-the-cuff:
Workout #1
1) Run 3 miles
2) Do 50 pushups
3) Curl a pair of dumbbells until failure
4) Leg Press some weight until failure
Workout #2:
1) Swim 50 meters for (5) all-out sprints with 1 minute rest between sprints
2) Towel off and do 100 squat thrusts
3) Do 10 sets of 10 chins, or as close to it as you can
Workout #3:
1) Bench Press 100 pounds for 10 reps, 90 pounds for 9 reps, 80 pounds for 8 reps, 70 pounds for 7 reps, etc, until you get to 10 pounds x 1 rep
2) 10 sets of 10 pushups
3) 10 sets of 10 clapping pushups
4) Static pushup for 1 minute. Repeat 10 times
Workout #4:
1) 100 sit-ups
2) Bike for 30 minutes as hard as you can
3) Squat your bodyweight for as many reps as possible
4) Crab-walk 100 yards. Repeat 4 times
Workout #5 (I Like to call this the “Infomercial workout”)
1) Do 7 minutes of 6 Minute Abs
2) Do 1000 reps with the Thighmaster
3) Do 30 minutes of P90X
4) Do 30 Minutes of Tae Bo
I could go on and on here, but I’m sure the point has been made. No need to stress the details. If it makes you tired, it was a good workout. How easy is that?!?!
Trouble-Shooting
Q: How do I know if my workout was effective?
A: If it made you tired, it was a good workout. If you didn’t get tired it wasn’t a good workout.
Q: Is that it?
A: Yup, that’s it!
Q: Well, what if I was tired but I didn’t sweat a lot?
A: Some people sweat more than others. Sweating is a good sign, but if you’re REALLY tired and only sweat a little, it’s all good.
Q: Here’s my question: My workouts are gassing me to the max, but I have shoulder pain and I have numbness all down my arm. Is that cool?
A: It’s cool. If you can’t feel your arm, just do lower body stuff instead.
Q: I really love super-setting trap-bar reverse curls and rope climbs, but I also wanna work on my six-pack. But how?
A: Easy- Just add crunches to your superset
Q: What if I sweat a lot, but I’m not tired?
A: If you’re sweating profusely, it’ll at least LOOK like you’re tired. But if you’re NOT tired, either do more exercises, more sets, more reps, and reduce rests between sets. At some point you WILL get tired.
Q: I’ve noticed that after several months of doing 20-rep bench presses that I can bench 145 pounds x10, but my max is only 155 pounds. WTF?!?!
A: Do the 20-rep bench workouts make you tired?
Q: Yeah, usually I puke after wards.
A: OK then, you’re burning calories, PLUS puking out the calories you already ate- it’s like a bonus!
Q: Should I do 2-a-day’s?
A: Yes.
Q: What about 3-a-day’s?
A: That too
Q: What about…
A: Look, I know where this is going. Stop.
Next Week:
In Part Two of this series, I’ll examine why losing weight is easy. No need for elaborate formulas, nutritional credentials, or expensive grocery bills. Losing weight is so simple, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of this yourself!
About The Author
His colleagues call him an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him “The Secret Weapon” for his ability to see what other coaches miss. Charles calls himself a “geek” who struggled in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles’ methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results. His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing demeanor have lead to appearances on NBC’s The TODAY Show and The CBS Early Show.
Currently, Charles competes in Olympic-style weightlifting on the master’s circuit, with a 3-year goal of qualifying for the 2009 Master’s World Championships.
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Interesting post, and I do love the simplification of training… however I’m not sure I agree with recommending a program (or rather a series of workouts) based on “just do hard physical work to burn calories”. This doesn’t take into account the types of exercises or training methods that can lead to an increase in GH production, which is important for fat loss. It also doesn’t consider the effect some of these workouts may have an lean mass (could they be catabolic?)… maintaining lean tissue is very important to our resting metabolism. Could the lack of consideration for training muscle groups in balance lead to injury? Anyway, you get my point. It is a nice contrast to all the convoluted training programs out there, but perhaps too over-simplified in it’s concept. Just my thoughts.
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From strictly a calorie burn category, very cool. Even the infocommercial workout (sans Thigh Master!) looked inviting.
Love the attitude in the writing as well!
bill
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This is the kind of simple work that people used before we really knew anything about training and they lost weight!!
Andy
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The article is sarcastic. Charles is making fun of Crossfit type workouts and pointing out how calorie burn is not hard. He makes it known that if you only care about calories, nothing is important. He is not sellng a random workout series.
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