Q&A: What exercises to turn fat into muscle before August 11th? How many times/reps to do them?

aerobics equipment

2 Responses to “Q&A: What exercises to turn fat into muscle before August 11th? How many times/reps to do them?”

• 1

  Gina C Says:
  November 26th, 2013 at 7:29 am
  

  You cannot turn muscle into fat, you can build muscle which will burn fat. Muscle takes up less space than fat.

  Some great exercises you can do to burn fat are squats & lunges while doing shoulder presses. You want to engage your upper & lower body to burn more calories. There are so many workout DVDs that you can buy or rent that can help you to know what to do. I personally use P90X and Chalean Extreme and have lost 3 pants sizes doing them. If you have cable, go to FitTv and try the workouts there. Giad has some great workouts, as does Kathy Smith, Denise Austin & many others.

• 2

  Ethan Says:
  November 26th, 2013 at 7:33 am
  

  Light aerobics won’t get you anywhere; knee push ups, jogging, and jumping jacks won’t do much to burn fat or to build discernible muscle (no exercise actually converts fat into muscle). I can help though, but you’re going to have to completely overhaul your workout. Since I don’t know your muscle/fat body ratio, I would suggest two different routes:

  1. If you’re little over weight and slightly out of shape, these’ll work for you.

  Push ups (the real thing): Do as many as you can at the highest intensity possible. No pauses, 1 second up, one second down. When you can’t do anymore, take a 60 second break and go for it again, same intensity. When you can’t do anymore, take another 60 second break and move into knee push ups until failure.

  Weighted squats: Same as a regular squat, except you’ll be holding something heavy to your chest; nothing under ten pounds; take an empty milk jug and fill it up with sand if you have to. Follow the same procedure as the push ups, remember, intensity is everything (but keep good form too). One second up, on second down. Do three sets, the last one being unweighted.

  High intensity cardio: Jumping jacks, jogging, and running won’t cut it. This exercise won’t build muscle like the above but it will burn “some” (weight training is the only true fitness solution) calories. Your options would be high intensity sprints, or high intensity swimming. You need to do one of the two if you want to make it without buying weights. You’ll use the same tempo as the above for these exercises, and you have to move at your quickest until you burn out. If you can swim (preferred exercise) you need to stick to the overhead stroke along with the scissor kick. The butterfly stroke will work too, I would suggest alternating. You can look these strokes up anywhere so I won’t go into description. If not, three sets of high intensity sprints. Don’t move any slower than your highest possible speed and don’t stop running into you get stabbing pains in your side. Then rest a minute and go at it some more.

  Do all of the above every other day while maintaining a 2000 calorie diet and you’ll see guaranteed improvement. But only if you follow the above.

  2. If you’re 10+ pounds overweight (concerning fat) you have no choice but to join a gym and undergo some serious weight training. That’s the only way you can really make some serious progress in such a short amount of time. I would find a full body exercise article on bodybuilding.com that catches your eye and stick with it for the two months you have while keeping that 2000 calorie diet (but with a much higher protein intake).

  It’ll be tough, but if you follow either on of these options you see a physical change. Honestly, I would recommend weight training, but the first option works too (just to a lesser extent). Good luck.

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