Fitness experts offer best solutions for burning body fat, losing weight

Tuesday, October 20, 2015
How to burn fat without spending time on treadmill
Fitness pros say quit the cardio and get into strength training for the best weight loss and fat burning benefits.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE (KABC) -- Owner of Drenched Fitness, Julie Kennington, gets frustrated with those who spend time focusing on cardio when there is a much faster and more effective way to torch calories.

"Don't think for one second that cardio is going to do anything more than help your heart health and burn a couple calories today," said Kennington. "What is going to sculpt your body to make you look the best and burn calories long term? That's strength training."

At Drench Fitness, they marry two key fat burning principles: high intensity interval training -- that's short term bouts of cardio sprints -- stacked with high intensity strength training.

The best tips for strength training: First balance. If you work one side, you've got to do the other. You also want to do a push exercise then a pull exercise, then vary your intensity, speed, then angle.

You can use free weights, body weight or something Kennington's husband Brandon developed called "Flexline." Instead of weight plates, there are cables that deliver up to 100 pounds of air pressure.

Each client can add or take weight away with the press of a button while working out.

"Instead of stopping as you would with traditional weight because you can't lift anymore, you're able to continue lifting because you can let a little out stay in that failure zone let a little out do another rep in the failure zone, and so on and so on," said Brandon Kennington, co-owner of Drenched Fitness.

To be clear, when you fail, you win, as it takes more calories to maintain muscle mass, about 50 extra calories per pound.

"It's one hour a day, you're burning 800-1000 calories you're getting everything you need from weights to cardio," said David LaSalle of Thousand Oaks.

"Recent research shows is by far the most effective way to get the EPOC turned up," said Brandon.

EPOC is basically the "after burn" or the elevated rate you burn calories post workout. With this method, it can soar 33 percent higher.