THERE'S ALWAYS A reason to get your body moving, be it bettering your physical aesthetic, gaining strength, or increasing athleticism. Whether you're trying to bulk out of your t-shirts, hit a mile run PR, or fit into your old favorite pair of jeans, your overall health is the common denominator in all things fitness. You'll probably be healthiest when you're up and active, doing movements that burn through excess fat.
Yes, we do need some fat stores for energy, but having too much can cause adverse effects on your overall health. Losing excess fat can help you more than just in the vanity department. There are two kinds of fat on the body—adipose and visceral fat. Adipose fat is the kind of fat we think of when we’re focusing on cutting for aesthetic purposes. This added weight sits just below our skin. Visceral fat, commonly generalized as belly fat, sits along our organs, and can be hazardous to our health. Having too many of these fat deposits can smother our lungs, heart, and liver, causing unnecessary pressure and inflammation to these vital organs.
Unfortunately, there is no way to train that helps us lose one type of fat over the other, or to target a particular area on your body to reduce. Spot training or reduction, as it is commonly referred to, is the myth that you can workout one portion of the body to lose the fat in that spot. Even though spot training doesn’t exist, there are plenty of exercises you can do that will help eliminate and burn that stubborn fat all over.
menshealth.com Men's Health 7-Minute Workouts for Fat Burn - Men's Health Shop
menshealth.com Men's Health 7-Minute Workouts for Fat Burn - Men's Health Shop
Not every fat burning workout is created equal. When many trainers think of exercises to torch through fat, they tend to focus on intensive metabolic moves—think high energy moves like burpees, slams, battle ropes, and the like. That’s not necessarily wrong. But there are other exercises that can work, too. Heavy loaded multi-joint movements like squats and deadlifts challenge multiple muscle groups, which both helps you to build more muscle and expend more energy, burning fat.
Add these fat burning exercises to your training plan to get on the right path. Just remember, you can’t outwork a bad diet, and you’ll struggle to burn fat if you’re not in a caloric deficit—so focus on improving your habits in the kitchen, too.
The Best Fat Burning Exercises
Burpee
The classic go-to fat burner for trainers, burpees are almost a rite of passage for just about anyone looking to break a sweat. You'll drop to the floor, push back up, and jump for one rep, then keep working.
Just make sure you don't overdo burpees. Stick with sets of 10 at a time at most to start, and if you have any upper body issues, try these scaled variations.
Jumping Rope
If you think jump ropes are only for kids on the playground, you don't know skip. The most basic piece of equipment in the gym gives you a full body workout with a ton of fat burning potential.
Start off by perfecting your speed skipping form for short periods, two minutes at most. Once you master the basics, there's a whole world of jump rope moves and workouts open to you. Try out some high intensity interval (HIIT) routines with the rope and jump into even more fat torching benefits .
Med Ball Slams
Med ball slams are the perfect exercise for your crappiest days.
You're not just burning fat here—burn away stress, anger, boredom, or whatever else is bothering you as you smash the ball into the ground as hard as humanly possible.
Use your entire body for the move, raising the ball above your head and rising up on your toes, then using your core, hips, and arms to slam it back down. Catch the ball as it bounces back to your chest and repeat.
Just make sure to keep your body under control, since there's no need to make your day worse with bad form.
Back Squat
Heavy loaded back squats are a cornerstone of weight room workouts for a reason: there are few more reliable methods of building lower body strength. But the compound exercise is also a fat burner, since you're engaging multiple major muscle groups and expending lots of energy to move the weight.
Make sure that you stay smart when you squat. For maximum fat-burning potential, employ proper form by engaging your core, hitting an appropriate depth for your own mobility (to parallel or just below), and working slowly through each rep.
Dumbbell Snatch
Pare down technically challenging Olympic lifts to dumbbell movements like the snatch to challenge your coordination, build strength, and of course, burn fat. You'll also hone explosion and athleticism while keeping your shoulders safe.
The name of the game here is triple extension—the process of extending and straightening your ankles, knees, and hips. Focus on the three component parts of the exercise: pulling the weight off the ground, exploding through the hips to raise it up, then punching the dumbbell overhead and landing underneath.
Deadlift
Another big, bad, heavy lift that doubles as a fat burner is the deadlift. The multi-joint exercise gets the whole body involved, particularly the posterior chain and lower body, and the effort it takes to move the weight off the floor kick starts your metabolism.
You'll get the most benefits from deadlifts if you're performing the exercise with big loads the right way. That means you engage your core to help stabilize your spine, you use your glutes and hamstrings to power the weight off the floor, and you're moving slowly and deliberately through each rep.
Kettlebell Swing
Swings are a super versatile exercise that can build lower body size and strength as you incinerate fat. The key is using your hips to drive the movement—your arms are only there to hold the handle of the weight.
Make sure that you're still in the right position when you swing. You shouldn't be squatting and raising the weight; instead, keep your knees slightly bent, hinge at the hips, and keep your head in a neutral position to keep your spine aligned properly.
Farmer’s Carry
Loaded carries are so simple that the exercise might seem too obvious to be an effective fat burner—but anyone who has been forced to lug a set of dumbbells or even a heavy load of groceries for a long walk can attest to how quickly the weight becomes a burden.
Posture is key here—grip your handles tightly, engage your glutes and core, draw your ribcage in, keep your gaze ahead, and make sure that you don't allow your shoulders to slouch forward as you step.
Battle Ropes
Battle ropes are an implement that have become infamous thanks to the high-intensity workouts for which they're often employed. The routines challenge you to use your whole body to swing, slam, and shake the implements while squatting, lunging, and jumping—so you're going to ramp up your heart rate and burn through fat.
Crawls
Crawls are another simple, deceptive means to hone your strength, mobility, and athleticism while burning fat. The movements are so effective because you're getting your whole body involved.
Like some of the other exercises on this list, crawls are only truly effective when your spine in a safe, neutral position. Focus on bracing your core and moving with a purpose—a bear crawl should never be a brainless gallup for speed if you actually want to reap the benefits.
Walking Lunge
The lunge is a gold standard leg exercise that challenges you unilaterally—you'll work just about every muscle in your leg, and once you get walking, you'll up your heart rate, too.
Keep posture a priority as you lunge, especially if you load up the exercise with weight. You'll get more out of the movement by engaging your core, keeping your chest up and your gaze forward, and driving up into the next step. If you're low on space, try alternating reverse lunges.
Dumbbell Thruster
Thrusters with barbells are a CrossFit staple for challenging WODs, but you can use dumbbells to make the exercise work for your fat burning goals.
The move has multiple components, so make sure that you're doing everything properly. You're essentially combining a front squat with a push press—for the best results, emphasize the depth in the squat, then explode up to drive through the top of the press.
Mountain Climbers
This exercise should be familiar to anyone who's taken a HIIT class, for good reason. Mountain climbers are a solid method to push your heart rate up while honing your abs and athleticism, too.
Keep your posture on point to make the most of the mountain climber. Think of the plank position as important as the knee drive—that means you're squeezing your abs and glutes even while you're pumping away with your legs.
Inchworms
Inchworms light up nearly every muscle in the body when done properly. Throw this move into the beginning of your workout to warm up, or at the end to burn out. Either way, this will get your whole body pulsing, incinerating fat all over.
Walk your hands as out to pull your body down into a plank position, trying to minimize the sway in your hips when you shift your weight from hand to hand.
Jump Squat
If you’re not feeling like adding weight to your squats, why not try adding height? This explosive movement will boost the heart rate and fire up the quads, glutes, and calves.
For this move, start in a low squat position, and power up by shifting your weight from the heels to the toes. When you land, finish low back into the squat position again, tightening the quads to brace the knee joints for impact. Do this for several reps at a quick pace and the only break you’ll get is when you’re in the air.
Good Morning
Wake up your posterior chain, glutes, and hamstrings with this full body lift. The engagement of several large muscle groups really gets the blood flowing and thus, the heart pumping.
Similar to the deadlift, the power of this movement comes through the posterior chain and hip extension. This means engaging the core, hinging the hips, and powering up by squeezing the glutes together. The good morning, however, requires a bit more back and core activation with the weight placed behind the head.
Sled Pushes
If you’re looking for that burning feeling, sled pushes are for you. Sleds harness power and strength into one fat incinerating move that will fry the muscles and get the heart rate up. When you're pushing, keep the arms straight, the spine neutral, and drive through the front foot.
Turn up the heat by increasing the weight and going heavy and slow to burn out your muscles, or work for performance by opting for the light weight and picking up speed to increase your heart rate. Whichever way you choose, you’ll feel this in a burn-so-good way.
Superman Plank
Similar to the inchworm, this move is great to start up or finish off your workout. This plank variation doesn’t only work the core muscles, but burns the deltoids with the extra extension in the shoulder.
After you set up in your push up position, walk your hands out past your shoulders. This is going to cause you to want to arch your spine, giving your core a little extra cue to stay tight then a traditional plank. Alternate the arm lift, and you'll add in an extra challenge to your core and shoulders to prevent rotation. Hold this for a little while and you’ll feel it all over.
Brett Williams, a fitness editor at Men's Health, is a NASM-CPT certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter who splits his workout time between strength and conditioning training, martial arts, and running. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.
Cori Ritchey, NASM-CPT is an Associate Health & Fitness Editor at Men's Health and a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. You can find more of her work in HealthCentral, Livestrong, Self, and others.
