When it comes to fat loss, most people embark on a program of cardio and dieting. Strength training is just an afterthought. Strength training, however, can burn just as much, if not more, fat than cardio. Why is it that people focus on cardio as their primary fat burner?

For one thing cardio does shrink you down. But it does just that: it shrinks down both your fat and muscle. You end up skinny and soft. Bodybuilders, however, want to retain or even build muscle while burning off fat. Why? A larger engine burns more fuel. Larger muscles burn more calories and more fat.

While cardio burns calories and fat when you’re performing it, high rep strength training has what is known as high EPOC or “Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption.” This is a fancy term for saying how long your metabolism is elevated after exercise. Studies show that a well-designed strength program can elevate your EPOC or metabolism for up 38 hours after the workout. In other words, you continue to burn calories long after strength training. Whereas once you stop cardio, the calorie burning stops as well.

Strength training coupled with diet and cardio burns fat far more than cardio and diet alone. In bodybuilding terms, we call this “cutting up.” Bodybuilders bulk up in the off-season, gaining as much weight and muscle as possible. During pre-contest season, they strip away the fat through diet and training, which consists of weight training at higher reps with shorter rest periods. This sort of training induces a large dump of growth hormone (GH) in your body. GH is a potent fat loss hormone and a very mild anabolic.

Generations of bodybuilders have figured out through trial and error that high rep strength training coupled with cardio and low carb dieting gets them cut up. Here’s what a conventional pre-contest bodybuilding program might look like:

Chest
Bench press – 5 sets, 8-10 reps
Incline dumbbell press – 5 sets, 8-10 reps
Cable crossovers – 4 sets, 10-12 reps

Back
Lat pulldowns – 5 sets, 10-12 reps
Dumbbell rows – 4 sets, 8-10 reps
Seated cable rows – 4 sets, 8-10 reps
Hyperextensions – 3 sets, as many reps as possible

Shoulders
Superset:
/ Dumbbell military press – 5 sets, 8 reps
\ Laterals – 5 sets, 12 reps
Bent over laterals – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Cable laterals – 4 sets, 10-12 reps

Thighs
Machine Hack squats – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Lunges – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Leg extensions – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Leg curls – 4 sets, 10-12 reps

Calves
Standing machine calf raises – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Donkey calf raises – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Seated machine calf raises – 4 sets, 10-12 reps

Biceps
Preacher curls – 4 sets, 8-10 reps
Incline curls – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Concentration curls – 4 sets, 8-10 reps

Triceps
Dumbbell French press – 4 sets, 8-10 reps
Triceps pressdowns – 4 sets, 10-12 reps
Dumbbell kickbacks – 4 sets, 10-12 reps

As you can see a typical pre-contest routine involves more machines, dumbbells and isolation movements. Rest periods would start out at 1 minute and decrease by ten seconds from week to week until you hit 20 seconds of rest. Each body part would be trained 3 times a week.