When I meet someone new and they find out what I do for a living, I’m often asked, “what is the best exercise to lose weight?”
As much as I enjoy being asked this question, it’s obvious that we, the fitness industry, are doing a poor job educating the public.
So here’s my piece, I hope everyone is listening.
There is no single best exercise to lose weight. Just like there is no single best exercise to become a better golfer or no single food that is best to give you six pack abs.
So here’s what I tell them, ‘your body will transform as you constantly improve the amount of work you can perform.’
I know, not exactly the answer you wanted to hear, but allow me to explain this concept for a minute as this could dramatically change your training approach.
Achieving an athletic looking body certainly doesn’t happen overnight, despite the bombardment of ads claiming to do so from the “guru’s” of the fitness industry. A primary reason why you cannot transform overnight is because you simply cannot perform enough work in a single day. It’s this reason that limits your short-term success but also makes your long-term success predictable.
MORE WORK, MORE RESULTS
If today you perform 100 repetitions of an exercise, I don’t care what exercise it is, and in a week you are able to perform another 100 repetitions with 10% more weight/load than your body has adapted to performing more work. Now image you’re able to continue that process for 6-8 weeks, your body will have no choice but to transform. I used 10% as an example but even 1% can be substantial enough.
CHOOSING YOUR EXERCISES
Your ability to perform certain movements will dictate which exercises you can use to accelerate your weight loss efforts. You may not be able squat, so a split squat would be a good alternative. You may not be able to perform a chinup so an assisted chin or cable pulldown will do for now.
THE BEST WEIGHT LOSS EXERCISE
Now, if you really want to transform your body quickly and easily maintain your athletic body look then you must work towards performing complex movements, like squats, deadlifts, chinups, and presses. These are foundational exercises that when executed properly will allow you to add substantial weight/load, further increasing the amount of work performed, and that’s when your body will literally transform overnight, LOL.