Summer Burn: 12 Week Fat Melting Workout

As the days on the calendar pass, and the outside temperatures begin to rise, the amount of clothes we are able to (or wish to) wear slowly starts to diminish.

Whether it be to work, the gym, to the beach, park, or family barbecue it is certainly nice to be able to show off the fruits of your labor – confidently and proudly displaying all of the muscle you work so hard to build.

However, before you go rushing off to your local sportswear store or favorite online shopping spot to purchase some new spring/summer duds, why not take the next 12 weeks to focus on shedding as much body fat as possible?

Because while we all know that thick, dense, defined muscle is totally awesome - you certainly “can’t flex fat!”

Recommended: Need help losing fat? Take our Free Fat Loss Course

Fat Incinerating Tip Sheet

1. Cardio Upon Awaking: While research is conflicting as to whether cardio is more effective done in the fasted state, ensuring you do get your cardio in bright and early will help you burn fat.

2. The Right Supplements: Every morning start your day with a powerful, multi-stage thermogenic fat burner and about 5-10 grams of scientifically formulated BCAA. Doing this prior to your early morning cardio will give you all the energy one needs to power through your early morning grogginess.

3. Carb Cutting: Each week leading up to summer eliminate about 25 grams of carbs from your daily diet, while adding in ten grams protein. This will help create a calore deficit needed for fat loss, increase the thermic effect of food, maintain muscle, and assist in shedding excess subcutaneous water.

4. Hunger Troubleshooting: Lets face it…existing in a calorie deficit, which is a necessary evil for getting lean, is not always an easy task. There will be many times where your blood sugar will drop, your tummy will cave, and you will begin fantasizing about attacking the cookie aisle of your local supermarket!

However, the result in that case is certainly not very beneficial when the goal is looking like a comic book superhero. I have found the best way to stave off hunger and bring energy back to an adequate level is to consume a huge glass of cold water with 5-10 grams of your favorite flavored BCAA powder mixed in.

5. Cardio Splitting: If your goal is 60 minutes of cardio for the day, for example, you will manifest superior results by splitting that (total) time between two, or even 3 sessions, than doing it all at once. You could wake up and do 30 minutes of cardio fasted, another 15 minutes post workout, and the final 15 before your final meal.

This “splitting” strategy will help keep the metabolism elevated all day long, which effectively makes you into a literal fat-burning machine.

6. Vary Cardio: Some studies indicate that HIIT cardio is more effective at incinerating adipose than steady state - while others show the opposite. In my experience, I have become convinced that both types of cardio work (each carrying their own advantages/disadvantages), and thus both should be a part of your overall program.

A highly effective strategy is to break cardio up, as suggested earlier (#5), into a 30/15/15 scheme (if the goal is one hour daily) with the first 30-min session being steady state and the following two as HIIT.

7. Get Intense: When the main goal is dropping body fat it is a great idea to make your weight training sessions more productive and intense via the use of supersets and dropsets. These intensity techniques are not only valuable for stimulating muscle growth, but also will raise heart rate, increase metabolism, burn greater calories and push natural GH (a very powerful fat-crushing hormone) through the roof!

8. Compound Pounding: You will burn a heck of a lot more calories, as well as stimulate higher levels of natural hormones that destroy body fat if you make sure to include plenty of basic, multi-joint exercises in each of your workouts. This is not to say that you should shy away completely from more isolated movements, but only that you do not neglect some serious “compound pounding!”

The 12 Week Summer Burn Workout Program

The following workout is a 12 week program to get you shredded for summer.

Rest as long as needed in between sets to slow your breathing just about back to normal and have your mind ready to push 100% on the next set.

For optimal fat-loss you will do 60 min of cardio per day on off days from training and 20-30 minutes either fasted or post workout on lifting days.

As each week passes you can use the program exactly as is laid out above, or you can tweak by adding/subtracting certain movement and/or simply changing the order in which the exercises are done.

Monday: Chest, Biceps, Forearms, & Abs

*Each set utilzies a drop set. So perform 1 set, drop the weight performing an additional set, rest, and repeat.

Tuesday: Quads, Hamstrings, & Calves

*Each set utilzies a drop set. So perform 1 set, drop the weight performing an additional set, rest, and repeat.

Thursday: Lats, Lower Back, & Abs

*Each set utilzies a drop set. So perform 1 set, drop the weight performing an additional set, rest, and repeat.

Friday: Shoulders, Traps, Triceps, & Calves

*Each set utilzies a drop set. So perform 1 set, drop the weight performing an additional set, rest, and repeat.