The Greatest Fat Loss Tool Ever Made

Workout Tips

There is a fat-loss machine you have access to every day. But chances are, you're not utilizing it.

The tool: It's the floor.

Simply getting up and down off the ground stimulates fat loss, revs your metabolism, and makes it more likely you'll survive a zombie onslaught.

Here's why it works so well: Floorwork is an exercise in inefficiency. The better you get at a movement, the less effective it becomes at burning fat.

But hitting the Earth during your workout challenges every last muscle in your body and works them in ways they're not use to.

In football, we always did a fun fat-loss protocol called grass drills (also known as up-and-downs). We would have to run in place with high knees. When the coach blew his whistle, we'd hit the grass, lying down on our bellies, and then immediately scramble back up to our feet and start high knees again. This was in full pads during the summer, and the sweat would just drain from of our bodies.

Since then, I've always incorporated ground-based exercises into my own workout and in my clients' routines. It's not only great for people who want to lose weight, but also for athletes who want an edge.

Here are some easy ways to add groundwork into your routine.

Use Your Rest Period
Kiss the ground between sets with any of the following examples.

1. I like stability movements like bird dogs or plank variations between my upper-body exercises. (Bored of the standard plank? Try these 5 Plank Exercises That Work More Than Just Your Abs.) 

We use heart rate monitors with many clients, and it's amazing to see how the heart rate jumps up when they do something like the bird dog.

It could be the instability of the exercise, the nervous system trying to keep up, the act of hopping up and down off the floor, or maybe a mix of all of the above.

2. Between sets of a classic lifts like the deadlift, squat, bench press, or row, foam roll the targeted muscles for that specific exercise.

You'll keep your heart rate up by turning your rest period into an “active rest,” and also improve your range of motion for your next set.

3. You can insert pelvic tilts or hip thrusts into any rest period, too. Unlike some other cardio choices like jogging, this hits the big, powerful muscles on the backside of your body and ramps up your metabolism without pounding on your knees, ankles, or back.

Create Fat-Burning Combos
Mixing groundwork with other fast-paced, heart-pumping exercises increases your fat-burning effect.

The simplest way to do this: Add pushups. An exercise like the kettlebell swing raises my pulse, but popping up and down off the floor to perform pushups makes it jump even higher. 

Try it: Perform the following 3 exercises as a circuit, finishing the prescribed number of reps for each movement before moving on to the next one. Only rest when needed. That's 1 round.

Complete 5 rounds for a total of 75 swings, 25 squats, and 25 pushups. 

Kettlebell Swing: 15 reps
Goblet Squat: 5 reps
Pushup: 5 reps

You can create your own combos. Pick from this list of the 10 Best Exercises for a Flat Belly, and then add pushups.

 

 

Workout Tips

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