What Exercise Burns More Belly Fat?
Posted by Hourglass Angel on Jun 5th 2019
Whether you’re recovering from pregnancy or just want to tone up your figure, the belly can be one of the peskiest trouble spots for many body types. When selecting the best types of workouts, one of the main questions you may be asking yourself, “What exercise burns more belly fat?”
While you can’t explicitly direct your body where to remove fat when you burn it (your DNA does that), you can nonetheless be strategic with workouts that burn a lot of calories, boost your metabolism and build muscle tone in the areas you want. In this way you’ll effectively be able to reduce the fat around your middle as well as your whole body, so you can look leaner and toned.
The best way to attack belly fat is to do a combination of cardio and strength training exercises. For the best results, aim to work out 4-5 days a week. You can amplify the intensity of your workouts by wearing a waist trainer.
The Benefits of Cardio
True to its name, cardio exercise primarily benefits your cardiovascular health. It strengthens your heart and lungs and improves your endurance—not to mention, it can also boost your mood and give you more energy and motivation to follow through with a health lifestyle.
Cardio exercise is accessible and beneficial to everyone, regardless of size or fitness level. You can experience the benefits whether you take a brisk walk, go for a run, take a bike ride, or use the cardio equipment at a gym.
It’s also easy to add a waist trainer to your cardio routine. Simply strap on a workout band like the Latex Curve Creator Workout Band by Hourglass Angel HA101 and get a higher intensity workout. The garment works by stimulating heat and perspiration in your core, so you’ll feel it working.
Cardio can also burn calories and fat because you’re exerting energy to do it. If you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning, your body will burn excess fat—which for many people, is stored around the belly.
But remember, cardio isn’t all you should be doing in order to experience maximum fat loss and toning. You can’t reshape your figure without doing strength training as well.
Strength Training for Fat Loss
Strength training is any exercise that helps you build muscle through some resistant force. You can build strength by doing targeted bodyweight exercises or by using resistance bands, weights, or weighted machines.
The reason strength training is important for fat loss is because it helps you continue to burn calories after your workout is over. Once you’ve fatigued your muscles, they require a lot of energy to rebuild themselves. For the next couple of days following a strength training workout, your body can burn through fat reserves in order to add more muscle. It’s important to be mindful of your food intake during this time so that you will actually burn the excess fat.
Some people think that for the best results around your midsection, you should do a lot of core-intensive exercises like crunches, planks or Pilates. While these types of exercises are helpful for building core stability and strength, they’re not necessarily the best choices for eliminating fat. That’s because the core is a relatively small portion of your body, and you’re not going to burn a lot of calories by focusing on it exclusively.
Instead, choose strength exercises that require whole body exertion. Squats, lunges and deadlifts might be primarily known as leg exercises, but they also require a significant amount of core strength. Do these regularly with the amount of weights and reps that challenge you, and you’ll get the most bang for your buck with burning fat and adding muscle.
You can also add a waist trainer to any strength training routine for even more intensity. If you do the right combination of strength training exercises while wearing a workout band like the Workout Waist Trainer by Ann Chery 2026, chances are you’ll be sweating pretty hard—it will feel a lot like cardio!
One of our favorite full-body strength training routines rotates through the following circuit 4–5 times, 12–15 repetitions per set. Do this routine twice a week and watch the fat melt off:
- Dumbbell clean
- Push-press
- Front squat
- Dumbbell crush press
- Bent over row
- Split stance hammer curl
- Split shoulder press
- Squat curl to press
See the full workout instructions and video.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
If you’re short on time (who isn’t?), then we highly recommend you try HIIT exercises for fat loss. You can incorporate cardio and strength training into the same routine, which well help you burn a ton of calories, sweat a lot, and build up muscle strength.
Here’s how it works: you’ll go through a circuit of several exercises that require you to exert your full energy in short intervals. These may include moves like sprints, jumping rope, burpees, mountain climbers, or really anything that will increase your heart rate quickly and can be performed in the space you have.
After about 30 seconds at full intensity, you’ll get a short break to recover (usually about 10 seconds). Then you’ll go high intensity again for several rounds before switching exercises.
You can easily add resistance strength training to a HIIT routine by either doing it in between a few rounds, or at the beginning or end. While that may seem like it could take a lot of time, you only need to do HIIT for 15–20 minutes to be sweating hard (don’t forget your waist trainer!)
We put together some of our favorite HIIT workouts that you can do with a waist trainer:
Remember, no matter what exercises you do, it’s important to also be eating a nutritious diet that is helping you achieve peak performance so that you can burn excess fat. Talk to a nutritionist if you’re not sure what foods are best for your unique needs.