Fat loss and toning is all about increasing your body’s total energy expenditure. This combined weight and CV workout is designed to get your muscles working hard along with your heart and lungs. It will keep your heart rate elevated throughout the weights session which means you will be working in the higher ranges of the CV intensity scale. The weights session should be performed at a fast pace with no rest between the supersets. This will get your blood pumping and raise your metabolism to increase your body’s fat burning ability. The CV part of the workout includes high intensity intervals which will accelerate your calorie burning potential. So this combined workout will have you melting away fat whilst you sleep.

This workout is ideal for beginners who want to make the progression from machine based exercises to free weights. It’s a great introduction to free weight exercises as it’s not too technical. Although beginners should take it easy as the pace of this workout is fast . Start slowly take additional rest when required and progress gradually. It can also easily be modified for more advanced exercisers.

1 - Full Body Workout using Supersets

The workout should be completed in a circuit format, which means completing each exercise one after the other with no rest, except when changing from one superset to another. The exercises in this workout have been placed in specific groups of supersets, working the larger leg muscles first, then the upper body, arms and abs.

2 - Why Supersets?

Super setting is a great system that has been used by professional sports people, athletes and pro-body builders for years. The idea is that you perform 2 or 3 sets of exercises back to back without any rest. In this workout you will be performing exercises that work opposing muscle groups, such as chest and back, biceps and triceps. This increases the volume of work by effectively doubling up on the number of repetitions, keeping the heart rate elevated and making the exercise much more intense. It’s an excellent technique for fat burning and increasing muscle endurance. They are also a great way of getting over a performance plateau to kick start the body back into action.

3 - Start slowly and take a rest

This workout can get quite intense. The overall aim is to be able to complete 15 reps of each exercise through 3 full circuits of the weights workout. This is something to work towards. Start slowly; take as little rest as possible and achieve what you can. Always aim to improve and progress, so the next time you do this workout aim to do a little more..

4 - Pick a weight that you can just manage 15 reps with.

The ideal repetition range for muscular endurance and fat burning is between 12 and 20 reps. This workout uses light weights, but because you are performing supersets (back to back exercises with no rest), the volume of work is high. This causes the muscle groups being worked to tire requiring more endurance from the muscles. Training in this way means that your body will use energy from its stores in the form of fat, glucose and oxygen. Hence this is why this workout is ultimately good for fat burning.

5 - 30 to 60 Seconds Rest

Because the workout intensity is relatively low (low weights) and the focus is on endurance for fat burning then the types of muscle fibres used for this workout will recover relatively quickly. A short recovery period of between 30 and 60 seconds should be taken between each superset of exercises. Progression in muscular fitness can be made by gradually reducing the rest time between sets from 60 seconds to 30 seconds. A quicker recovery time indicates an increase in overall fitness.

The CV workout includes intervals that are at a high intensity coupled with intervals at a moderate intensity. Working with intervals at a varying pace has a number of advantages. It keeps the workout shorter, to help keep you motivated. You burn more calories working in this way in a shorter time period, so your CV session is much more efficient.

2 - I don’t like gyms and prefer to work outside. Can I do this?

Absolutely, you can apply this type of interval training to any CV activity, including running, cycling, rowing, walking or swimming.

The treadmill is not the best piece of CV equipment to do interval training on as the transition between interval speeds can be too slow. So if in a gym it’s best to use a cross trainer, stepper or bike where you have full control of the speed. Or do your interval running outside in the fresh air.