7 Tips to Lose Post Pregnancy Weight for Busy Mothers

Article Source By Holly Rigsby, CPT, Adapted By Paul Hoff.
www.FitYummyMummy.com

How would you like to give a kick-start to the New Year and lose your post pregnancy weight forever? Sounds good? Ok, try a few or all of the following steps to revitalize your work-out and throw high-octane fuel into your fat-burning furnace – your metabolism!

Step 1. Free Weights, Resistor Bands & Bodyweight Exercises

Your workout should include total bodyweight exercises (think press-ups, lunges etc) and hopefully free-weights (just a set of dumb-bells will do if you’re short on space and money) or you could invest in a set of resistance bands, great space savers and very effective, virtually a gym in a bag!

While exercise machines have their place in a gym, it’s better if you can use your body-weight or free-weights, as you need to use more muscle in your body to keep your balance and coordination, which in turn will help to burn more fat! Using free-weights or resistor bands use a much greater range of motion, meaning you build more muscle and burn more fat.

 Step 2. Multi-Joint Exercises

Use multi-joint exercises instead of single joint. What I mean is use the bigger movement exercises like dumbbell squats or dumbbell squat and presses, or dumbbell lunges, these movements take your body through a longer range of motion once again, because you will be using more intensity, you will be burning more fat. Single joint exercises like Bicep curls are fine if you’re trying to build that particular muscle or you can add it to the end of a workout to ‘shape’ it, but for maximum fat loss, use multi-joint first and foremost

If you are looking for those lean, toned beach body muscles (I’m not talking about Arnie Schwarzenegger either you don’t have to be bulked up to look great!) then you need to work as many muscle groups as you possibly can. Think about it, the basic squat doesn’t just work your legs, it works your bum, and forces you to work your back as well. Always consider the length your muscles are working on any given exercise, the longer the motion, the more fat burned.

Use the four main exercise groups and you wont go far wrong:- The squat (dumbbell, single-leg & lunges etc) Pushing (pressups, bench presses, military shoulder presses etc) Pulling (rowing, chin-ups, dumbbell rows etc) Total body ab exercises (hanging knee & leg raises, stability-ball rollouts, resistor band chops & crunches). These will all fire up your metabolism.

 Step 3. Supersets

Try supersets. This is where you string 2 or more exercises together to form one set. You can alternate muscle groups or exercises, so you could go from a squat to a press-up (muscle group legs and back) or, bench press then dumbbell row (pushing then pulling).

The advantages of these workouts are an increase in intensity of your workout becauses it reduces the rest time throughout your workout, plus you reduce your time in the gym, great for busy men and women. As I said before the intensity of the workout is higher, because you are always on the move, this intensity can easily be decreased or increased simply by increasing or decreasing your rest time between sets.

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Step 4. Rest Time

Further to my last sentence in step 3, try to keep your rest time between 30 and 60 seconds. This will keep you more focused on the task in hand. You could start of with 60 seconds and reduce it y small amounts each week, or you could simply change it up according to the superset you are performing. Keeping rest time in this range forces the muscle to recover more quickly.

Step 5. Repetitions Range

Go for a medium range of repetitions for maximum fat loss and building lean muscle between 8 and 12 reps. Research has shown that this range is optimal in building lean muscle and stimulating your metabolism to aid your fat-burning power. Don’t believe the myth that high rep cardio and weight-training will magically transform you into body beautiful, while heavier weights will make you look like a bulky Russian shot putter. This is one of the most common myths I hear, usually spouted by women who are really looking for an excuse not to bother getting fit. Bulking up like Arnold Schwarzenegger takes years of dedication and eating a mega amount of calories each and every day, that is not goal so put it from your mind now.

Step 6. Total Bodyweight Exercises

Further to step 2 , use total body exercises, this will drastically reduce the time spent in the gym, and give your body a thorough workout at least 3 times a week, thus maximizing your efforts to lose your post pregnancy weight.

Step 7. Cardio + Resistance Training

Cardio alone is not the optimal fat loss solution. While it certainly helps to burn calories, this is also temporary. Building muscle burning fat increases your metabolic rate, and so will help you to burn fat long after you have finished training. Time allowing, it would be best if you could incorporate both weight-training and some form of cardio into your workouts, but if it has to be one or the other, go with total body resistance training for the best results to annihilate your post pregnacy weight.

If you incorporate the tips I have detailed above into your fitness program, you will soon be turning heads on the beach!

Take action and enjoy the results!

About the Author

Holly Rigsby is a nationally recognized women’s fitness coach, certified personal trainer (CPT) and the author of the internationally popular e-book – Fit Yummy Mummy – Burn Your Baby Fat & Get Your Body Back. Go to Fit Yummy Mummy to get your FREE copy of her special report: “The Five Ways To Boost Your Metabolism.”

 

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