Exercise On a Mission: Workout Like You Mean To Lose Weight. Part 4, Making Your Meat Suit Habitable

Exercise was not something I grew up doing, it wasn't a huge part of my life as a kid. While I briefly played soccer growing up, it wasn't until I was in my early 20's that my fitness journey began. Once I discovered trail running and felt the glorious feeling of conquering a mountain; I was hooked for life. After trail running, I dabbled in yoga, then Crossfit and now I love mud races and being a gym rat. Fitness never ends and there's always something new and exciting to learn. Being fit allows you to be a jack of all trades in fitness. My point is that you don't have to have a fitness background, you don't have to be a natural; it's all teachable and I'm about to make fitness more fun for you.

 Ever seen competitive Crossfitters? If not, let me enlighten you. The look of fit:

Christmas Abbott, Um Merry Christmas...AMAZING

Some of the Best Crossfitters are motivating to watch and just plain fun to look at

Fitness models have nothing on them these muscles are functional 

Exercise. The fast track cure to a plethora of hormonal imbalances. Exercise can:

• Increase your human growth hormone (youth hormone! the good guy)
• Reduce excess estrogen (the bad guy when in excess)
• Increase testosterone for strength and confidence
• Lower cortisol
• Reduce blood sugar imbalances

Want fast and furious changes to your body composition? AND feel like a warrior while doing it? EXERCISE with a PURPOSE! Your goal with exercise is to tweak your hormones by causing a neuroendocrine response. What, what did you say? A neuroendocrine response means you are shifting your hormones into badass-motha fat-loss mode. This is why Crossfit athletes are super fit machines.

This idea of changing your hormones far surpasses the notion of going to the gym just to burn calories. This means you go to the gym to build muscle, change your body composition and become super fit! Doing intense exercise will increase your Human Growth Hormone and testosterone, thus your body will effortlessly reduce fat storage in areas like your thighs, belly and chest. In fact, a friend of mine very recently started going to Crossfit and like magic, dropped 5 pounds in her first two weeks. That's getting results! You don't have to go to Crossfit to make this happen for you, I'm going to help show you how you can do it on your own.

Exercise Powerhouses:

1. HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training. This means intervals. You don't stay at the same speed on the bike, you do speed work, then you rest or you do less hard work and you cycle through that. This is how you burn fat: you get your heart rate up, then you let it fall down again in cycles. You could even run Sprints!

What can HIIT do for you:

• Keeps your fat burning furnace on full blast even AFTER you have left the gym/stopped working out
• Makes you POWERFUL like a bear, STRONG like a lion and FAST like a cheetah 

BEST HIT Workout of all Time!

Pull Ups for a sexy upper body

2. Compound Movements  Picture deadlifts, squats, and pull ups and all the muscles and joints you use for those moves. Compound moves does you a huge favor by allowing you to steer clear of isolation movements and all the strange equipment at the gym. The hamstring curl machine, bicep curls and lat pull down machines can gather dust for all I care; unless you're training for a figure competition or need to work just one muscle. Where isolation moves are working each individual muscle at a time, compound movements work multiple muscles at one time- TA-DA! You get stronger FASTER and you have way more fun! The best part about functional, compound movements is you are training your body for the real world. How do you pick up something heavy? You deadlift it. How do you pull yourself over a wall? You pull yourself up. How do you sit down? You squat. This is what functional fitness is all about.

How many muscles are being used here? 

              Benefits of Compound Movements:

• Works your core. No more need to separate ab work from your workout. Compound movements will indirectly build your 6-pack abs while making other parts of you strong. WINNING.
• Reduce body fat fast because compound movements demand a lot of energy output
• Allows you to lift heavier things thus building more lean muscle 

Coming to the gym to get super  fit? Say NO to hamy curls

Compound Movements:

• Barbell anything
• Kettlebell swings, snatches
• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Pull ups
• Power Cleans
• Burpees
• Push presses
• Dips

3. Tabata Is the 'wham, bam thank you ma'am' of workouts. It's  a 4 minute fat-blasting workout. A version of HIIT, tabata  is 20 seconds of work followed immediately by 10 seconds of rest, then repeated for a total of 8 rounds. Download a Tabata song onto your IPOD so you know when to stop and start working & don't have to be a slave to the clock. Download here.

"A study by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata, who founded Tabata training, found that high intensity training improved VO2 max (or your maximal oxygen consumption)  by about 14%, while anaerobic capacity improved by 28%. These effects will help you shed those extra pounds of fat, while also building lean muscle. " - Muscle and Fitness Magazine

Remember! The key is to workout with intensity and do it consistency. One killer workout a week won't cut it, you need more than that to get into beast mode. Your workouts need to be intense 3 times a week, consistently. This means you need to find something you love to do, because if you hate it- you can't make it happen regularly. Sure, you can force the issue for a while, but we're not talking about a while, we are talking long term.

A Beckham workout? Got it right here!

4. Sprints! Sprints make you feel like a warrior, a sweaty badass warrior who wins all battles. You can't lose when sprinting. Doesn't matter your speed, it's a customized speed that you decide is hardest for that particular sprinting day. It's going ALL out, multiple times. And I suggest not stopping or walking between sprints but instead keeping with a slow jog or walk. Sprints are intervals at their finest moments of glory.

Need workout ideas? 

1. Follow my Tumblr blog where I post a lot of my workouts here.
2. Get years of workouts for free on Crossfit.com in their archives
3. Bob Harper's Deck of Cards
4. Check out Healthy Habits Exercise page
5. Crossfit Travel workouts (WODS), 100 of them



Feel a little behind the 8-Ball on the Weight Loss Series? 
Making Your Meat Suit Habitable, catch up: 

Part 1: Starting the Weight Loss Wheels in Motion
Part 2: Proper Care And Feeding of Your Liver
Part 3: Body Fat Map