Intervals and Weight Training

[bellboy]

After far too many false dawns I am currently doing weights and kettlebells three times per week for a duration of about 45 mins per session but wanted to know the best way of increasing my chances of losing some blubber over the next two months prior to a holiday in the US. Is minute on and minute off high intensity intervals three days a week preferable on the days i am not weight training? What type of rate should i be looking at? Are short and sweet sessions better for me? I had inguinal groin surgery a year ago and despite it not being 100% i feel more comfortable pushing the envelope now. Any advice greatfully received.

[dwalk]

Diet is at least 70% of weight loss, maybe 80%. If you do high intensity sprints on your off days your body may not get to completely recover. Throw some 30sec sprints on the end of some of your weight sessions and use your off days for some less intense longer rows.

[bellboy]

Diet is pretty good. Increased my protein and dropped the carbs. Just need to knock off about 25 pounds (Have about 45 to lose) to have me looking half decent. My body has toned up underneath the blubber from the kettlebells these past two months so i just need to accelerate the fat loss which is where the intervals come in i think

[hjs]

Diet is pretty good. Increased my protein and dropped the carbs. Just need to knock off about 25 pounds (Have about 45 to lose) to have me looking half decent. My body has toned up underneath the blubber from the kettlebells these past two months so i just need to accelerate the fat loss which is where the intervals come in i think

There is no magic formula. Intervals are ok, but won,t do wonders. Patience and enough work is the only solution. 2 pounds per week doable. If possible do more work, not hard, it must be easy enough so you can do a lot. Just firm walking is fine. (Op top of your training)

[G-dub]

The sad reality is that you don't need to lose much weight to look good in the U.S.! I remember hanging out in Colombia with some friends who leer from there and they said that they could spot an American a mile away - he/she was the porky one. Good luck with your effort. I think the low carb approach with easy / long cardio works great to shed fat. If you go too hard, your body will ask for too much food.

[hjs]

The sad reality is that you don't need to lose much weight to look good in the U.S.! I remember hanging out in Colombia with some friends who leer from there and they said that they could spot an American a mile away - he/she was the porky one. Good luck with your effort. I think the low carb approach with easy / long cardio works great to shed fat. If you go too hard, your body will ask for too much food.

No, going to hard needs more recovery. On a cal deficit that is difficult. Even fully fed high intensity is hard to recover from. Low impact training can be done with much volume and less needed recovery.
You still should do weights/higher impact, but mostly to minimice strenght/muscleloss and to fire up base metabolism.

[PowerRower]

After far too many false dawns I am currently doing weights and kettlebells three times per week for a duration of about 45 mins per session but wanted to know the best way of increasing my chances of losing some blubber over the next two months prior to a holiday in the US. Is minute on and minute off high intensity intervals three days a week preferable on the days i am not weight training? What type of rate should i be looking at? Are short and sweet sessions better for me? I had inguinal groin surgery a year ago and despite it not being 100% i feel more comfortable pushing the envelope now. Any advice greatfully received.

I recently trained the last 12 weeks on a calorie deficit. I had to be mindful and take consistent refeeds to not diminish my performance to much but I was able to drop about 25lbs in 12 weeks. When I started going back to a calorie surplus my erg times started improving again... so if you are worried about performance you definitely want to add in re-feeds and listen to your body. Give it fuel when it needs it.

[bellboy]

Thanks for the advice chaps. It is mainly time constraints that makes intervals more appealing. A short sweet intense session is much easier to work around my somewhat hectic life. I am going to give it a go for a few weeks to see how it pans out. My technique has alwas been solid (it needs to be on my slugglish 19 year old erg) and i just need to keep it that way. My body composition is changing somewhat due to the weights/kettlebells that im using. I am assuming that this is lean tissue building up the way i want and the calorie burn you get from weights. My holiday to WA will be greatly enhanced if im not the fattest bloke in the room and iv got 8 weeks to cut some timber