Battling the Bulge

I'm training a friend of mine who's similar in size & shape to where I began at my heaviest.  It's taken me the better part of 10 years to figure out my philosophy on attaining fitness and he's the first person to implement my discoveries (I jokingly call him "Patient Zero").  He's losing weight at a tremendous pace (3-6 lbs per week) and is down 55 lbs from his heaviest.  He's basically jumped onto my training regime...basic, compound weightlifting exercises; moderate cardio a couple of days per week; and high intensity cardio a couple of days per week.  Today was our first day of high intensity cardio...man, what a lesson.  No matter how fit you get, I've learned that there are always ways to push yourself harder.  After a warmup & some light upper body work we headed outside with a rubber band, a 70 lb heavy bag, a 100 lb rock, and a 200 lb log.  We did a bear crawl & a band run (running with the band around your waist while the other person pulls against you with the band) to warm up the legs.  We then did heavy bag shuttle runs.  These consist of running 50 feet with the bag on one shoulder, returning with it on the other, dropping the bag into a bear hug for 50 ft, dropping it & dragging it running backwards for 50 ft, then running forwards with the bag dragging behind you for a final 50 ft.  2 rounds of these had us wanting to lay down.  Instead we proceeded to throw around some weight before we called it quits.  He used the 100 lb rock & I used the 200 lb log.  The exercise was to lift the object & throw it in any direction as far as we could - 5 times.  Holy crap.  The 200 lb log is hard enough to just lift, but throwing it added an entirely new dimension of intensity.  We were both sweating profusely & ready for a shower & some grub.

Training like this was key to my leaning out.  Getting strong got me part of the way there, working on endurance did amazing things for my ticker & energy levels, but I was never able to really dig into my fat stores until I started playing around with HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training).  I don't think it's something you should do week in and week out for years on end, but throwing it into every other training program you implement will work wonders for your fat loss efforts.