What is rest? For me that means a couple things. First, it’s a break from heavy weight training—and that’s essential. You can’t train heavy every day and continue to make gains. That’s especially true when you’re cutting calories on a fat-loss program like Operation Aesthetic.
Second, that doesn’t mean you just lie on the couch and do nothing. You’ll still perform your 2 sessions of 25 minutes of steady-state cardio. You’ll perform that first session when you wake up. Remember that the reason for this is that when you wake up your body is low on blood sugar, so it will need to pull stored energy to support this activity. That means it will burn body fat.
But your body also likes to preferentially burn muscle mass over stored body fat. For that reason, you’ll get in amino acids such as fermented Glutamine and fermented BCAAs before this cardio session. This will encourage your body to release fat from storage while protecting your muscle mass.
Then you’ll perform another 25-minute session of cardio later in the day to keep your metabolism revving and burning body fat as you cut calories.
Add in abs training today if they’re a lagging part of your physique. You can train abs before or after your second cardio workout for the day. I’m providing a couple suggestions for abs moves—I like to go with one that works from the top of the rectus abdominis (six-pack muscle) and one that works from the bottom.
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EXERCISE
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SETS
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REPS
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COMMENT
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Early morning cardio
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1
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25 minutes
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Perform this session upon waking on rest days before consuming food.
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Kneeling cable crunches
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4
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15–20
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Choose a weight that allows you to reach failure in this rep range. Rest only about 30–45 seconds between sets.
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Roman chair leg lifts
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4
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15–20
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Force a contraction into your abs with each rep, and rest only 30 seconds between sets.
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Post-workout cardio
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1
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25 minutes
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You can perform this one at any time of day so long as it’s at least 3 hours or so after your previous session. Make sure you’ve had at least one whole-food meal between these cardio sessions.
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TIP: I can’t stress this enough: These moderate cardio sessions on your rest day not only support fat loss, but they also help your body recover for the next weight-training day.
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