Can you lose fat with short bursts of exercise lasting 15 minutes or less?  Yes – if you are doing sprint, interval or burst training!

With sprint training, you burn a LOT of oxygen, as you greatly increase your rate of breathing to recover from oxygen debt.  You burn a lot of oxygen in a short amount of time, which puts you in a state of oxygen debt, causing you to burn a lot of calories both during and AFTER you have stopped exercising.

This increases your metabolism for several hours after your exercise session.  The result is increased fat burning without spending several hours exercising.

We know that interval sprinting is a great way to burn calories while building or maintaining your lean muscle tissue, but this can be a little hard on the joints for those of us over 40.

The solution?

Burst (sprint) training on the X-iser!  This is an adjustable mini-stepper made of aircraft aluminum and used by several pro sports teams with their athletes.

It allows you to do sprint training without any impact on the joints, while working on single leg balance – which is important for injury prevention and performance.

You can use it as part of your warmup or as a separate cardio workout.  You would do 20 -30 second bursts, followed by a short rest period and then repeat for the desired amount of time.

This intense exercise elevates your heart rate in a hurry, making it a time efficient workout and a great way to lose fat.  As little as 5 minutes of this interval exercise can get the job done.

For those of you in decent shape who want to get even leaner, try doing Tabata’s – 20 seconds of all out stepping followed by a 10 second break, repeated for a total of 4 minutes.

Tell me what that does for your HR!  This routine was shown to increase your fat burning potential when done with cyclists on a stationary bike.

Don’t let a lack of time be an excuse for not exercising.  You just need to choose an efficient form of exercise.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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