What is The Best Exercise To Lose Weight? Combine Strength And Cardio

Cardio activity burns calories, and strength training speeds up your metabolism. So this combination, cardio + strength, is the best for weight loss. With a fitness expert, we explain the training plan that works best.

The combination of cardiovascular exercise with strength exercise is undoubtedly the one that gives the best results for losing weight.

1. Cardio + Strength, Good Tandem Anti-kilos

The sum of both types of exercise helps you lose weight faster than if you do them separately.

Cardiovascular exercise:

It is one that, by definition, increases the heart rate and ensures an increase in energy consumption while we are practicing it.

And that’s just what we need to lose weight: consume more energy to burn fat from our reserves.

Let’s remember here that the body needs 25-30 minutes of continuous exercise to start burning body fat.

Strength exercise

It causes an increase in energy consumption not only while you are doing it, but also afterward.

This is so because the exercise of force generates muscular destruction. “That is why the stitches appear, and they hurt us: they result from the destruction of the muscular sarcomere, and until it is recovered, there are discomforts”.

And while the muscle is recovering, your body consumes more calories even if you are sitting watching television.

But strength exercise not only increases caloric expenditure by the energy consumption required by the muscle to recover.

This type of exercise also increases your muscle mass, and the muscle itself consumes more energy than fat.

In summary, that strength exercise increases your metabolic expenditure at rest, that is, it accelerates the metabolism, which is very interesting when it comes to losing weight.

2. The Best Strength Exercises

Any exercise that generates muscle tension is a strength exercise, and there are many. The ideal is to practice them in a varied way to work all the body muscles and not focus on one area.

Squats or squats. With your legs shoulder-width apart and your back straight, bring your glutes down as if you would sit in an imaginary chair until you are at a 90º angle.

Push-ups. They are the typical push-ups with the hands and the tips of the feet resting on the floor and the body in the plank position.

Pull-ups or pull-ups. It consists of holding onto a raised bar with your palms facing out and pushing yourself up from this position.

Tractions. Anything that involves bringing resistance to the body is a good exercise of strength. The options are several: practice rowing on a fitness machine, stretch with suspension straps.

Lunge. It is a forward stride and works legs and glutes.

Step up. One leg is placed on the step or a slightly elevated platform, and the other foot is raised by force only with the leg resting on the stage. The step-up or classic step climb strengthens the legs.

Bicep curl. With 2 kg weights in each hand and arms close to the body, flexing the elbows brings the sides to the shoulders.

3. The Best Cardio Exercises

Apart from running or cycling, four cardio exercises to practice at home or in the gym, which are complete.

Burpees. Standing consists of bringing your hands to the ground and your legs back until you are in the plank position. Then drop your chest to the ground and return to the starting position with a little jump to stand up.

Squat jump. It involves squatting and, from the 90º position, jumping upwards.

Here it would be important to relate to the theme of the cardio exercise that works best

Skipping. It is merely running without leaving the site.

Jumping Jack. It consists of jumping while opening your legs and raising your arms, then closing them and lowering your arms.

4. Your Custom Cardio + Strength Plan

You can start your session by doing the strength exercises suggested above first.

Doing three series of 12 or 14 repetitions with a break of 45 to 60 seconds between each set of each of them.

You can also do a circuit with 4 or 5 varied strength exercises doing a series of each one. Repeat the course five times but without breaks.

After strength work, you can do a 30-minute cardio session consisting of going for a run, running on the gym treadmill, or combining the four suggested exercises (burpees, squat jumps, skipping, and jumping jack).

5. To further enhance the fat-burning effect.

Working on strength first and then cardio is an effective formula, if you want to lose weight, it is even more useful:

Alternate a strength exercise with a cardio one. “For example, you can do 45 seconds of squats and then 45 seconds of burpees and combine strength and cardio exercises to complete the session.”

If you have excess weight, you must follow a hypocaloric diet supervised by a dietetic and nutrition specialist. And if you are not trained in exercise, it would also be advisable that you put yourself in the hands of a fitness expert.