5 Ways To Boost Your Client’s Fat Loss
Do you have a client looking to lean out, change his or her body composition, or reclaim their wellbeing? As a trainer, understanding your client’s goals is your most basic function and the epitome of what you do. A novice-level client will ask you what to do to help accomplish their goals.
Here is the advice everyone can (and should) follow: Stop reading magazines and stop following the same old mainstream methods.
Instead of mainstream ways of wellness, give your clients these tips for boosting fat loss. This is the advice that will likely help your client lose body fat quickly, and you will help that client become more likely to stay lean for life.
Get Your Nutrition In Check
Surprise, surprise! Nutrition is single-handedly the most important aspect of fat loss. You have to remind clients to make time for meal prep so they are not tempted to make bad choices throughout the day. You also need to encourage them to keep a detailed nutrition journal tracking everything. Regardless of what nutritional parameters a client follows (be it high-carb, low-carb, high-fat, or low-fat), you will need detailed info of their macronutrient breakdown so you will know how to adjust their diet and exercise plan accordingly when progress slows or stops.
Try to avoid entire cheat days and stick to just a meal to avoid getting too far off track. Lastly, if your client falls off the wagon, don’t let them use it as an excuse to stay off. Help them get right back on by making their next nutritional choice a beneficial one.
Get Stronger And Gain Muscle Mass
This advice may not be as glaringly obvious as the previous. However, if we are trying to create metabolic “damage” for as long as possible, then strength training is the way to do it. Studies show that we may burn calories for up to 72 hours after a rigorous strength training workout. So this means that you will need to get your clients to lift heavy! Also, we would like our bodies to be fuel “inefficient” (using a lot of fuel/calories) because the stronger you get, the more “fuel” each and every rep will take out of you.
It’s a pretty simple concept here; try not to overcomplicate this advice when explaining to clients. The more muscle you have, the more fuel you use every day, regardless of activity. Simply said, more muscle mass raises your metabolism. This concept will also give you a bit more room for error on the nutritional aspect in regards to carbohydrates.
Use Big, Compound Movements
Again, we are talking about the most “damage” we can create in a workout. The big compound movements are the ones you should stick with.
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Press
- Bench
- Chin-ups
These will create significant usage of energy, and when done for the strength they will take longer to recover from and help build muscle mass. When crunched for time, opt for the large movements, not the abs and arms workout you want to do.
Use HIIT Training
LISS (low-intensity steady-state cardio) is not as good for fat loss as many belief. You become very efficient at burning calories and therefore will not burn as much fuel as compared to using HIIT (high-intensity interval training). For HIIT training clients should be going at near 100% effort for no more than 30 seconds with about 2 minutes of rest in-between efforts. This type of training has been shown to preserve muscle mass, whereas LISS has been shown to reduce muscle mass.
Now, it is true that you burn a larger percentage of calories from fat in LISS training, but the overall total is so much lower when compared to HIIT, that LISS it is not superior. For example:
- LISS for 1 hour burned 500 calories and 80% from fat to mean that 400 fat calories have been burned
- HIIT for half an hour burned 1000 calories over the next 48 hours and 50% from fat, with a total of 500 Fat calories burned
Don’t Overdo It
Lastly, you should not be training clients too hard every day. Encourage them to take 1-3 rest days every week. If they are stressing their bodies too much, their workouts can backfire and be detrimental to fat loss. Sometimes more is not better; smart training is better!
Hopefully, you and your client found these tips helpful and you can start to make some small changes in your program to ensure fast and long-term fat loss for all. Follow the above tips, train hard, eat with purpose, and you will be amazed at what the human body can do.