And what does harder work mean? MORE FAT BURNED for fuel. You can't keep doing the same thing at the gym all the time if you expect to burn fat. Muscles get used to the same workout routines and adapt very well to this predictability. The result is a baseline level of fat being burned. But throw a curve ball at your muscles: confuse the muscles and they will dig deeper into fat stores -- and voila...you'll burn more body fat.
Muscles have a "memory" for workouts. But when a person throws in something unexpected, this results in muscle confusion. An example is suppose your cardio routine is always the elliptical machine. The muscles have adjusted fine to this. But one day, you run around a track -- something you've never really done before. Your muscles will be like, "Hey! What's going on here! What IS this?"
The confusion will force muscles to work harder to adjust to this unfamiliar training stimulus. So if your cardio always consists of, for example, step aerobics classes three times a week, keep one of those classes, but the other two cardio routines might be running on a treadmill and pedaling hard on a stationary bike (such as a spin class).
The muscle confusion concept applies to strength training.
Do you use only weight machines, moving predictably from one exercise machine to the next? Especially in the same order all the time? Replace some weight machine workouts with barbells and dumbbells. This will really bring on muscle confusion. If you do a lot of lat pull-downs, quit doing these for a while and instead do pull-ups, or modified pull-ups if you're not strong enough.
Maybe one day a week your strength training program could be all cable machines. Or maybe all barbells: no machines, no dumbbells. Muscles must not know what's coming next. Predictability and routine burn only so much fat.
But mixing things up and never keeping things predictable will confuse muscles. A confused muscle needs more energy to work efficiently. The energy will be taken from the fat you've been struggling to lose.
Great leg toning exercises:
www.associatedcontent.com/article/1050546/leg_toning_exercises_youll_love.html
Published by Jillita Horton
Freelance writer for fitness print magazines and fitness Web sites; ghost writer for fitness Web sites View profile
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