Kettlebell or dumbbell swings to lose weight

 

I don't do a lot of cardio or anything else to burn fat. I have mentioned before that I am not a big fan of what some people call “endless cardio”. 

Incidentally I am not a fan of endless cardio. I prefer activities such as intense weight lifting, bodyweight exercises and sprints to long slow jogs and other forms of endless cardio. Not only are they not as beneficial but they are also just plain more time consuming. 
How Many Crunches Should I do a Day alternative exercises

I look at marathoners and other people who do distance type events and they are usually very skinny and emancipated looking. A lot of times they are skinny but have no abs or a little tiny six pack where each “pack” is about as thin as a pencil.

Honestly I have a fast metabolism, am pretty active most of the time, working jobs where I walk around a lot and sometimes pretty physical and just “doing” stuff on my free time as opposed to sitting around watching tv.

The weight lifting I do (primarily dead lifts) burns off most of the calories I need. Losing fat is mostly about diet anyway. I feel the key of dieting is sugar control. So I don't usually preach a lot about doing anything else to burn fat.

But I realize that most people don't have my fast of a metabolism and haven't become accustomed to eating as carefully as me (kind of becomes habit after a while and when you do cheat occasionally you feel bad). So a little more work to burn that fat may be necessary, possibly only because dead lifting and similar weight lifting is something that you should probably only be doing a couple days a week for under an hour a day. Meaning it may be necessary to do some stuff that you can do more frequently to burn more fat.

One of my favorite activities for this is swings. Even though I don't do any exercises strictly for burning fat as I mentioned I don't need too. I have had to perform cardio/conditioning type training for boxing and this is a great exercise both for burning fat and for getting in shape for a fight. It is something that can be done everyday depending on your workout routine (I recommend having a “weekend” where you rest for a couple days).

Boxers do a lot of training in rounds since we fight that way. Often this is 3 minutes of work with 1 minute of rest done several times. I started out doing this, I liked doing one armed swings with a 35 pound dumbbell, alternating between arms every 10 reps. Pretty soon I found that I did about a 100 in this time span and just found it easier to do sets of 100 instead of timing it. I also acquired and switched to a kettlebell somewhere during this time.

The exact weight you use shouldn't be big deal as long as it isn't overly over or under what you should be using. Proper form is key as among other things this can give you a sore back if done incorrectly. If you are only getting less then 10 or 12 reps then this is great for strength training but you aren't going to be doing any conditioning (if using one arm then maybe you might try two armed ones to handle that weight or use less) if you are knocking out sets of 100+ without breathing hard then you need more weight (or if doing them two armed maybe you want to use one). But I would say if you can continually do reps (switching arms if done arm armed and working both evenly) and get 30 to 100 max in then this is probably a workable weight for you.

You can do these in 2 (beginner) or 3 minute sets (or count, though I like a number that takes around that much time to complete) then take a minute off and repeat for 3 to 5 sets. This can be a great way to burn fat.