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How do I get ripped? How do I lose body fat? How do I lose this extra weight? These are questions that I’m asked regularly once people find out that I’m a personal trainer. Since I’m not one to feed you b.s., I have to tell you it isn’t easy. It requires adopting a new lifestyle, and that means discipline and commitment. If you are willing to do that, use the plan I’ve laid out below and you’ll get some serious results.

1. Focus on Maximizing Muscle Recruitment. What exactly is muscle recruitment? Pretty much exactly what is sounds like. It refers to the amount of muscle you recruit or use during an exercise. This should be a key point when creating a fat loss workout plan. Why… because using more muscle spends more energy, which cooks more calories, which results in greater fat loss. So how do you get there? It’s all about your exercise selection.

Here’s something you’ve probably seen at the gym: A guy with way too much belly spending an hour isolating his biceps and triceps. Bad choice my friend. Since biceps and triceps are small muscle groups, working them individually doesn’t recruit much muscle. Let me show you a better option. Rows (cable, dumbbell, or barbell) trigger the large muscles of the back and the biceps at the same time. Tricep pushups or dips trigger the chest and shoulders as well as the triceps. Some other good picks for arsenal are bench presses, squats, and deadlifts. Of course there are many more exercises out there that also fit the bill.

2. Circuit training is your best option. About 18 years ago I trained my first client. Over that time I’ve seen a lot of techniques emerge in the fitness industry. That being said, I still firmly believe that circuit training is the ideal option for losing fat. If you do it right, results can come pretty quickly. Here’s what to do: Put together a sequence of 4-6 exercises. Move from one to another with no more than 15 seconds of rest in between each one. You should notice your heart rate increasing, which will boost the amount of calories and fat you burn over time. Complete the circuit as many times as you can in one hour. If you are not able to maintain that long, work for at least 20 minutes and increase every workout by a few minutes until you can train for an hour.

3. Use a journal to keep the results coming. Listen up because this is really important! If you don’t keep pushing your body to the next level, your results won’t go to the next level. The human body has an amazing ability to adapt – that means what was once a challenge will no longer be a challenge after a little while. If your workout stops being tough, you will stop losing fat. So keep a journal (during your workout), and track the following (per exercise), weight or intensity, amount of repititions, and total amount of sets. By increasing at least one of these each time you train a muscle group, you will make sure positive results continue.

5 Vary the exercises and methods (stability ball, free weights, calisthenics, plyometrics, etc) you use. You might have also heard this called muscle confusion. It puts a constantly changing demand on your body, which keeps your body from adapting and prevents plateau.

So here’s the wrap up – If you want to get ripped you have to lose fat and excess weight. Put all of this together with a quality eating plan and your results will skyrocket. Perform 10 – 30 minutes of power cardio (jump rope, brisk incline walk, or swimming) on the days you don’t strength train. Get in 2-3 per week. Happy Training!!

Vaughn Council is a personal trainer with many years of experience. If you have been looking into fat loss programs, visit his site. It’s a great resource for circuit training workouts, and much more.