The prerequisites of fat loss must be achieved first before exercise will accelerate fat loss and help you improve your body composition
Reprogrammed your body’s ability to burn body fat (Adapt your body to burn fat vs carbs lesson)
You’ve gotten enough hours of total sleep (How much sleep is enough to burn fat and upgrade your health lesson)
You’ve gotten enough hours of deep sleep (Deep sleep lesson)
You’ve implemented action steps that eliminate most of your stress and make you more resilient to stress
(The short/long term impacts of stress & how to combat them lesson)
(Control what you can, get rid of what you can, reframe the rest lesson)
(Don’t just relax, restore lesson)
(Expect the unexpected lesson)
(Movement outside to boost happiness and lower stress lesson)
(Start full, end full lesson)
You haven’t eaten in the last 2-3 hours/your blood sugar levels are low/you aren’t stressed out at the moment (Nutrient Timing lesson)
You’ve currently burnt through the 80g of stored carbs in your liver (Time Restricted Eating lesson) signaling the release of stored body fat to get sent to your liver to get broken down into free fatty acids and released into your blood, and now is the ideal time to start exercising.
Those free fatty acids get shuttled into your muscles to help fuel muscle contractions, but there’s a problem. Muscles can burn free fatty acids. Your mitochondria cells in your muscles have to convert the fatty acids into ATP (the fuel type your muscles use so they can relax and contract again).
The more mitochondria cells you have, the more fat you can convert at a time and burn per minute/throughout the day standing, doing chores, physical activity, aerobic conditioning, and resistance exercise.
Doing any structured Aerobic conditioning workouts will give you the following benefits:
Increases how many GLUT-1 transporter you have, allowing you to pull more sugar into the muscles from your blood when you’re not exercising
Increases glucose uptake from the blood by increasing GLUT-4 transporter activity in your muscles, which shuttles in sugar from your blood into the muscles to be burned
Stimulates Fibronectin type III domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5) which turns your white fat into beige fat increasing how many calories you burn at rest
Lowers systolic blood pressure (the top number) in 3+ months
There’s a 20-60% increase in insulin sensitivity over the next 24 hours
Can lower hemoglobin a1c by 1.33%-2%
Increases HDLs up to 27.3% in 4+ weeks
Lowers visceral fat by 3%-7.5% in 1 year
Improved Bone Density
The specific benefits are married to the aerobic method you choose to do that governs the design of your program. The unique body composition, health, and performance benefits from various methods are:
Body Composition
Increase your fat burning cell count in your type I endurance muscles
Increase your fat burning cell size and how many you have in your power endurance muscle fibers
Increase your fat burning cell size and how many you have in your heart
Accelerates fat metabolism of the fat wrapped around your organs
Increase your fat burning heart rate and total daily fat loss potential
Burn 20% more calories at rest over the next 24 hours
36% increase in fat burning hormones during and after
Increases testosterone and fat burning hormones
Upgrades muscles to burn 25% more fat at your next workout
Health
Lowers resting heart rate
Lowers blood sugars by 35% in real time
Improves blood lipid profiles
Performance
More energy
Maintains muscle size and strength
Improves 60 second heart rate recovery
Increases muscle healing speed by 200%
Increases power endurance
Increases creatine levels so you can recover faster between sets
Increases anaerobic threshold so you can stay aerobic longer
Faster aerobic and anaerobic threshold speeds
The only way to individualize aerobic workouts to your body and give you all the benefits listed above are to test your aerobic qualities.
There are testing labs around the country you can look for that do this.
I also offer this service and test more things than most places. I test your resting heart rate, blood pressure, 60 second heart rate recovery, 120 sec heart rate recovery, Aerobic Threshold (peak fat burning), Anaerobic Threshold (peak sugar burning), and Peak VO2 (peak aerobic power output).
You’ll then get sent a detailed report of each metric, the current status of each, and known measurement standards of each. This will give you a comprehensive overview of your entire aerobic system revealing which need to be targeted to give you the most goal-specific progress.
Then we will sit down and set a meaningful goal to boost your motivation and self-accountability.
It takes 60 minutes to test everything. You’ll need a reliable chest strap heart rate monitor, a treadmill, bike, or rowing machine (depending on which protocol you’d like to do). If you don’t own a reliable heart rate monitor, this is a critical accountability tool to making consistent progress, you can purchase one of the best heart rate monitors on the market from my Shop.
Doing any structured resistance exercise workouts will give you the following benefits:
Increases how many GLUT-1 transporter you have, allowing you to pull more sugar into the muscles from your blood when you’re not exercising
Increases glucose uptake from the blood by increasing GLUT-4 transporter activity in your muscles, which shuttles in sugar from your blood into the muscles to be burned
Increases interleukin 6 which promotes glucose and fat burning in muscles
Lowers systolic blood pressure (the top number) in 3+ months
There’s a 20-60% increase in insulin sensitivity over the next 24 hours
Can lower hemoglobin a1c by .55%
Lowers total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides by 2.7%-11.6% in 4+ weeks
Increases HDLs up to 11% in 4+ weeks
Lowers visceral fat by 3%-7.5% in 1 year
Improved Bone Density
If you do every rep with the intent to move quickly when you move your body or the weight away from the floor. This will increase your epinephrine and adrenaline levels which will directly communicate to your fat cells to be released into your blood to be burned during rest periods, and then by your heart and brain after the workout is over while you stay active and keep moving as much as possible.
The specific benefits are married to the resistance exercise method you choose to do that governs the design of your program. The unique body composition, health, and performance benefits from various methods are:
Body Composition
Increases the total number of fat burning cells in your endurance muscle fibers by 25+%, increasing how many carbs and fats can be burned and converted to fuel by your body every minute during the day.
Turn on your fat burning genes if you train below your aerobic threshold
Helps prevent muscle loss when you’re trying to lose body fat
Increases fat burning cell capacity in your muscles
Increases muscle size of the fibers
Increases the size of the contractile properties wrapped around your muscles
Muscle hypertrophy in slow twitch fibers (endurance fibers)
Increases fat burning cell capacity in your muscles
Increases the number of fat burning cells in your type IIa strength endurance fibers allowing them to burn more stored fats and carbs as energy.
Increased fat burning hormones over the next few hours
Accelerates fat metabolism of the fat wrapped around your organs
Burn 20% more calories at rest over the next 24 hours
Health
Lowers systolic and diastolic blood pressure
Can lower hemoglobin a1c by 1.6%
Increase strength and thickness of tendons and ligaments. This benefits injury prevention, joint longevity, and allows them to be trained later to absorb more force and assist working muscles to improve your strength.
Increases peak vo2
Performance
Increases how many capillaries you have accelerating muscle healing
Lowers your resting heart rate
Improved muscular endurance making it easier to do anything in life for a longer period of time.
Maintains or improves muscular endurance and fat burning cell count in endurance muscles
Increase strength endurance allowing you to become stronger and use that strength for a longer period of time.
Increases strength of type IIx fibers
Increases motor unit recruitment
Increases muscle synchronization
Helps your tendons and muscles absorb more force, increasing the amount of strength your tendons contribute to every exercise and movement, making you stronger and more resilient to injury.
Trains your muscle spindles to more accurately tell your brain how much force is being applied to the body so that your brain can activate the correct amount of muscle fibers to handle that load which makes you stronger.
Trains your Golgi tendon organs (GTO) to not shut down the muscle so early when tension is applied to it, which it commonly freaks out way too early leaving 40% of strength output on the table.
Turns eccentric stored energy in your muscles and tendons into potential force production
Speeds up how quickly muscle fibers turn on allowing you to produce more force in less time
The most effective and safest way to individualize resistance exercise workouts to your body are to test your strength/performance.
I test fitness metrics that are relevant to what you’re struggling with or what your vision is. I typically test your max strength (back squat, bench press, and other lifts), muscular endurance (push ups, situps, squats, and pull ups to failure), strength endurance (20RM Front Squat, 20RM Bench Press), Agility (Pro-Agility), Acceleration (10 yard sprint), Top End Speed (30 yard sprint), Power (Vertical Jump, Push Up Jump, and many others)
You’ll then get sent a detailed report of each metric, the importance of each, and what areas need to get stronger/improve performance.
Then we will sit down and set a meaningful goal to boost your motivation and self-accountability.
At the end of your goal setting session, if you’d like me to design you customized programs, along with start coaching and empowering you to achieve your goal, you will have to choose which coaching partnership option will benefit you the most. You will get the flexibility to start with, and shift whenever you want between in person 1 on 1 or small group personal training (which is a max of 6 people) or remote personal training if you don’t need live coaching support, allowing you to workout on your own whenever it fits your schedule best.
It takes 90 minutes to test everything. If you want to do this remotely, you’ll need access to a squat cage, barbell, portable bench, plates, stop watch, plyometric boxes, measuring tape, and 15-40 yards of floor space. If you want to do this in person, I have everything you need.
References
Dietz, C., & Peterson, B. (2012). Triphasic Training: A Systematic Approach to Elite Speed and Explosive Strength Performance. Bye Dietz Sport Enterprise.
Giudice, J., & Taylor, J. M. (2017). Muscle as a paracrine and endocrine organ. Current opinion in pharmacology, 34, 49–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2017.05.005
Jamieson, J. (2009). Ultimate MMA Conditioning. Performance Sports Inc.
Kelley, G. A., & Kelley, K. S. (2009). Impact of progressive resistance training on lipids and lipoproteins in adults: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Preventive medicine, 48(1), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2008.10.010
Trabelsi, K., Stannard, S. R., Ghlissi, Z., Maughan, R. J., Kallel, C., Jamoussi, K., Zeghal, K. M., & Hakim, A. (2013). Effect of fed- versus fasted state resistance training during Ramadan on body composition and selected metabolic parameters in bodybuilders. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 10(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-10-23
Vissers, D., Hens, W., Taeymans, J., Baeyens, J. P., Poortmans, J., & Van Gaal, L. (2013). The effect of exercise on visceral adipose tissue in overweight adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS one, 8(2), e56415. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0056415
Yessis, M. (2014). The Revolutionary 1x20RM Strength Training Program. Sports Training Inc.