Article By: John Fontana

I am always amazed when I see people who are trying to lose weight doing bicep curls or leg extensions.  I am proud of the fact that they are in the gym and working hard to achieve their goals but they are wasting time.  How long do you think it would take me to write this article if I was using the old fashioned method of ink feather pen?  The same concept applies with doing certain exercises to accomplish your weight loss goals.  If you are trying to lose some pounds and your workouts frequently consists of bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions and leg curls, please pay attention to what I say next.

When it comes down to it, even avid exercisers normally only weight train for a few hours a week.  Even if you workout an hour a day, five days per week you are still only exercising 3% of the time.  With so little time spent working out, why not maximize each workout by using the best possible exercises?

Multi-joint exercises are much more efficient and effective than any single joint exercise. In case you are confused, a multi-joint exercise is any exercise that requires more than one joint to move in order to complete repetition.  For example a lunge requires that your hip and knee joints both move, so it is considered multi-joint.  Typically, the more joints that you can get involved means using more muscles.  When you utilize more muscles during a workout this means you will burn more calories. When you perform an exercise your body needs energy in order to power your muscles, similar to the way a car needs gas to drive.  Think of multi-joint exercises like a big gas guzzling truck and a single joint exercise like a hybrid.  In this case you want the gas guzzling multi-joint exercises because they require much more energy; therefore they burn many more calories.

A good way to get out of the habit of thinking single joint is to think of movement patterns instead of muscle groups.  For example, if you were to squat to pick something up off the ground and then reach up and place it on a shelf above your head, you would be moving in a vertical movement pattern.  To perform a similar movement in a gym using single joint thinking, you would need to perform four separate exercises.   Or you can perform a squat to curl to press and knock it all out in one exercise.  This will not only save you time in the gym but also make you a much more efficient exerciser.  By using our muscle groups together as opposed to separate we are making a greater mind-body connection. Eventually this connection will lead to you being able to do more difficult exercises, which means burning more calories.

The truth is that you cannot “tone” a muscle group until you have removed most of the fat that surrounds it. The bicep curls won’t make your biceps more toned if they are wrapped in fat, no matter how many repetitions or sets you do.  First think about losing the weight you want to lose then get picky and start to work on certain areas that need more work.  Get all your muscles involved with bigger movements and multiple joints.

–

I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

E-mail me personally at jfontana@shadowfit.com

or Tweet me @johnnyfontana on Twitter