How To Exercise To Lose Weight

Today, I’m gonna show you some ninja tricks on how to exercise to lose weight.

You’ll never look at exercise the same way again.

Because it’s not always about working out hard where you’re always at a level 10, it’s about working out smart. There’s a world of difference between the two.

How To Exercise To Lose Weight

I’ve been in the trenches coaching everyday regular people for almost a decade now. There’s a big advantage working with regular people.

I also have experience working with high level athletes from my competitive days. But most of the people I’ve worked with are every day regular average people looking to improve their health, their fitness, and lose some weight in the process.

I’m extremely passionate about it because I know how life changing it could be. Even though I’m mostly online these days, I still coach fitness classes once a week at my local gym to stay in touch with the community.

What I’ve learned through that process is the importance of giving people just the right amount of exercise.

The truth about exercise for the average person

The truth is, people don’t really wanna workout every single day. That’s just the reality of it. Again, this is from coaching thousands of people by proxy. 

You can expect the average person realistically to do about 2 to 3 days a week of exercise. If I’m talking about my aunt, my cousin, my high school teacher, your co-worker, those people are only gonna workout 2 to 3 days a week on average.

So, how do we increase their training frequency? Well, I’m a big proponent these days of never being sore from exercise. You should workout but the next day, you should feel good so you can do it again. 

We evolved to move as human beings. Otherwise, you’d be a tree.

This concept applies whether you’re a complete novice or you’re a competitive athlete. 

How to workout SMARTER

Here’s how it works. There’s something called The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE). 

Let’s say I make you do pull ups. Everyone should work towards being able to pull their bodyweight. 

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say the maximum amount of pull ups you can do is 10. You couldn’t do 11 if your life depended on it. Which means you’re on that max effort activity. 

Does that mean you should you do 10 pull ups in a workout? No. You should do 5. 

Why? Because you wanna set yourself up to workout the next day. Then you’re gonna do 5 again the next day. The day after, you’re gonna do another 5. 

As you become more competent, you’re gonna do 6. When 6 is easy, you’re gonna do 7. 

Why? If you did 10 pull ups on Monday, you’re probably gonna be sore until Thursday. I’ve seen this happen a million times. So by Thursday, you’ve only done 10 pull ups. 

On the other hand, if I’ve just been doing 5 pull ups every day. So I’m at 20 pull ups already or even 25 pull ups by Thursday. I have more volume than you. Those numbers add up if you extrapolate them to a year.

Let’s use Muay Thai as another example. I’m doing Muay Thai every day for 3 rounds, light sparring, 5 days a week. That’s 15 rounds. 

You go in twice a week but you just go all out. You do 5 rounds and you push yourself in those last two rounds to the point of exhaustion. You’re completely red lined. You can’t even see straight. 

If you tally up the rounds, I’m at 15 and you’re at 10. Four of the ten rounds you did, you were hot garbage.

At the end of the year, I’ve had so much more quality training than you. Guess who’s gonna make more progress. Are you with me so far?

How to exercise PROPERLY

Here’s what I’ve learned through personal experimentation and coaching literally thousands of people for almost a decade. 

Exercise when done properly can actually produce energy. It’s called piezoelectricity. You should feel better after doing it.

Let’s say you’re feeling a 5 out of 10. 10 means you feel like you’re on top of the world and 1 being you’re a couch potato. With 5, you’re feeling average. 

If you do the right amount of exercise, you should feel like a 7 or an 8. You should feel better afterwards. It shouldn’t feel like you just got hit by a bus and you drop down to a 1 after your workout.

That’s why I’m such a big fan of micro workouts these days.

What Are Micro Workouts?

Micro workouts, as the name implies, are small 1-2 minute workouts that you can gracefully sprinkle into your routine throughout the day whether you’re at home or in the office.

It’s an unbelievably effective and powerful way to get out of sedentary daily routines that plagues a lot of people. 

A micro workout can be anything that gets you up and moving.

For example, 10 push ups and 20 squats at your desk.

You can do a set of pull ups if you have one at home or you can do bodyweight rows underneath a table. 

If you have access to some home gym equipment like a dumbbell or a kettlebell, you can do 20 kettlebell swings or dumbbell snatches a few times a day. 

Once you’re feeling good and you get that high, shut it down. Don’t go into the phase where your body is beat up and broken down.

Or, you only do it for a small period of time to trigger a fitness adaptation.

If you do it regularly, that’s when it starts to back fire on you.

The key is you wanna get into a state of flow when you’re working out. You know you’re there because time just flies. I’m sure you’ve done something before where you barely noticed time. That’s the flow state.

When you overdo it and you’re having the worst workout. It feels like every minute is an hour. Like, when you’re running on a treadmill and you can’t wait for it to end. You’re not in a state of flow.

How To Exercise To Lose Weight – The SECRET

A state of flow is having the right amount of difficulty but it’s not so hard that you go into anxiety. But it’s not too easy that you’re bored and you lose interest. It’s just the right amount of challenge.

The most important thing is you’re having fun when you’re working out. Exercise should be addictive. That almost guarantees to put you in a state of flow. Imagine if working out was addictive. Everyone would be fit. 

But people go into anxiety when they do it. Because they’re under the impression that the workout doesn’t count unless they’re sweating buckets. 

It really comes from this false paradigm of counting calories. That’s why people are gravitated towards doing cardio. 

The problem is, it doesn’t even burn as many calories as you think. An hour of hard cardio burns around 500 calories. You do that twice a week and that’s only 1000 calories for the week. That’s not a lot. 

For context, two blueberry muffins from McDonald’s is also 1000 calories.

It’s also now been scientifically proven that calories burned during exercise does not translate to body fat burned in the body. It’s a little more complex than that. 

But people red line their bodies doing cardio and then they have to convince themselves to do it again 2 or 3 days later. The mental energy that it’s gonna take for you to get there is a lot. 

No wonder people can only make it to the gym twice a week. 

You should be gravitated towards exercise. If you don’t wanna workout, that means it’s not fun. Which means you’re not gonna do a lot of it because you’re doing it wrong.

If you’re not gonna do a lot of it, you’re never gonna progress. Another year is gonna pass by and you’re still stuck in the same spot. 

Strength = Health

Here’s a very important concept you need to understand. Strength and health are tied at the hip. You can’t have one without the other. 

One of the best ways to predict someone’s health span is a simple grip strength. 

Again, the key is you have to be in a flow state. When you’re doing cardio, you wanna stay below your maximum aerobic heart rate which is 180 minus your age in bpm. 

Maximum Aerobic Heart Rate

It’s where you reap maximum aerobic benefits with minimum anaerobic stimulation. The effort feels easy to moderate which automatically puts you in a flow state. 

If you’re 34 like me, your maximum aerobic heart rate is 146 bpm. It’s the infamous fat burning zone. You wanna stay below that number. Don’t confuse it with maximum heart rate.

I’m such a big believer these days of consistency over intensity. That’s how people develop farmer strength by the way. 

I saw this first hand because I lived in a farm for a bit when I was a kid. My family didn’t have a lot of money growing up. But the farmers are not going to exhaustion. They’re not throwing hay bails to failure. 

They’re not yelling at each other, “Come on! Do five more! You can do it!”

No. If they’re too sore the next day and can’t work, they don’t get to eat.

Again, intensity should be done once in a while. You can’t go to your max every day.

That’s kinda the problem with the big rah rah guys like the David Goggins of the world. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denying they have great results from just powering through every single day. 

There’s this crazy story of him having rhabdo from doing pull ups, which is a serious health condition from excessive exercise, and could be life threatening if you don’t get medical attention right away. But he still powered through.

My question is, could he have done better if he got himself into a state of flow somewhere in that 70-75% range. I think so.

The problem with mainstream fitness

That’s also the same problem with the CrossFit scene and group fitness classes in general. People are taught that they need to train to hurt. It’s fatigue seeking. 

If you go to a typical CrossFit or HIIT class, people are often competing against each other. So the intensity is always at level 10. I did it for years. Looking back now, that makes absolutely no sense.

Again, getting sore is not an accurate metric of a good workout. It’s actually a terrible metric. You should not feel destroyed after a workout. Or if you do feel sore, it should be very minor. 

Excessive soreness means you overdid it. If you can’t walk the next day, you went too hard.

Excessive exercise intensity will just get your body to prioritize healing over adaptation. You’re not building strength or improving your performance. Your body is just prioritizing healing.

Think of a spectrum. One side is sickness and the other side is fitness.

You’re stuck in limbo where you’re unbelievably sore which moves you toward sickness, then heal. Which just puts you back to baseline. Get sore again, then heal. You just keep repeating that cycle and you never really improve. 

You don’t get stronger or see changes in body composition which can be demoralizing. You’re just training to hurt. You’re just damaging and healing your body. 

Just remember that volume and consistency is far more important than intensity. The intensity should only be ramped up periodically. If you do it every day, you’re doing it wrong. 

I fell into that trap more times than I’d like to admit. It was such an epiphany when I learned about this training concept. 

I was like, “I’ve overdone it every time I worked out all these years. My entire life is a lie.” Just kidding. But hey, now you can learn from my mistakes.

Listen, there’s a time and place for intensity. I’m not anti intensity. But make your workouts a 7 out of 10 and do them every day. It should be addictive.

That’s why bodyweight exercises are so effective. They’re very easy to recover from. Last time I checked, they’re also free.

You’re gonna get far more volume, you’re gonna get all the amazing hormonal adaptations, you’re gonna have so much more energy, and training is gonna become this addictive thing.

That’s why consistency at the end of the day trumps every thing.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

Need More Help?

Use this simple 4-step process to melt ALL the fat around your stomach and look good shirtless WITHOUT going on a crazy diet or wasting hours at the gym. Get the Lean Body Blueprint here for free!