Pyramid training for fat burning.
Pyramid training is a great way to condition the muscles for endurance based activities.
This type of conditioning training puts the body into an oxygen debt, which in turn leads to post exercise fat burning.
Body weight exercises such as press ups, squats, lunges, dips, sit ups or crunches work well as choices for your pyramid.
More advanced trainees may also wish to include burpees, squat thrusts or chin ups.
Deadlift/clean work should be avoided as high rep ‘pulls’ can often have a detrimental effect on the lower back.
Olympic lifts should also be avoided, as the loss of lifting form which occurs when you perform round after round of such movements also increases the risk of injury.
Here’s how to perform a pyramid workout:
Pick an exercise and perform 1 repetition.
Rest until you feel reasonably recovered and then perform 2 reps.
Rest and then perform 3 reps.
Continue until you reach 10 reps (the top of your pyramid).
Start working back down to finish with 1 rep.
A pyramid of: ?’1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1′ is 100 reps in total.
A ‘full’ pyramid works up from 1 to 20 and then back down to 1, for a total of 400 reps!
A pyramid (working up to 10) should take around 3-6 minutes, depending on the exercise, whilst a full pyramid could well provide you with 15-30 minutes of fat burning fun!
Try to keep the rest periods short between each set of exercise, but also try to ensure that you rest enough to get through the next set whilst maintaining good form.
Use these rest periods for pyramids and full pyramids:
Reps 1-5 – rest for up to 15 seconds.
Reps 6-10 – rest for up to 30 seconds.
Reps 11-15 – rest for up to 45 seconds.
Reps 16-20 – rest for up to 60 seconds.
Here’s a 300 rep fat burning pyramid training workout for intermediate trainees:
Body weight squats (up to 10 reps and back down).
Rest for 90 seconds.
Press ups (up to 10 reps and back down).
Rest for 90 seconds.
Sit ups (up to 10 reps and back down).
Try performing this workout twice weekly for four weeks and watch the fat melt away!
Best of luck!
121personaltraining.com – pyramid training – fat burning workouts.
