Many of us have experienced the overwhelming feeling of mental and physical exhaustion that comes with exercise burnout. When you push yourself too hard without sufficient rest and recovery, it ultimately becomes counterproductive to your fitness goals, and your energy will tank along with your motivation. Not only that, your performance will suffer when you overtrain and under-recover, and you’re left sinking further into the couch, wondering how you’ll lift that next weight, swim that next lap, or run that next mile.

With a combo of the right nutrition, rest, recovery, and lowering your training intensity, you can get back on track. To learn more about avoiding burnout and torching fat while sculpting muscle for men, I asked certified personal trainer and Vice President of Education for Body Fit Training, Steve Stonehouse, to share some of his vast knowledge on the subject. With decades of experience in fitness education, fitness programming, and personal training, Steve Stonehouse developed an in-depth knowledge of weight loss, improving body fat composition, building muscle, and the best exercise plans that generate serious results. 

Expert advice on burning fat

The Manual: As the Vice President of Education for Body Fit Training, what are your top tips for burning fat and improving body composition for men? 

Steve Stonehouse: As the programmer and head of education, this is a little cliché, but I go for balance. Not every workout can be this CrossFit type, give it all you’ve got, smoke yourself, and work out — that’s not sustainable. The other end of the spectrum is just walking at a moderate pace for 20 minutes on a treadmill three times a week, because that’s not going to do it either. There’s value in both of those scenarios. 

It’s best to have a session or two each week where the intensity is very high, and you’re testing yourself and pushing yourself closer to your limits. That’s anaerobic exercise, which is 90% intensity or above. It’s fine, safe, and healthy to get there occasionally, but every workout can’t be one of those. Your body isn’t built to train that way; you’re gonna burn out, and you could get injured, or both.

There’s a place for some moderate intensity as well, so if I were focusing on heart rate, I would say in the 80s, so it’s hard but not max effort, and it’s more sustainable. When you’re in that 70 to high 80s range, we categorize that as building aerobic capacity. Overall, I suggest an approach with recovery, moderate intensity, and then high intensity every now and again to test yourself. 

The best cardio for fat loss

TM: How does cardio help with fat loss, and what types of cardio do you recommend?

Steve Stonehouse: I’m a big fan of high-intensity cardio. Sometimes, people think if some is good, more is probably better, but more isn’t always better. If I were putting a program together for six days a week, I’d have three days as some type of cardio-driven day, and three of those days I would have some version of resistance training. Maybe some days are heavier, and other days are a little lighter with higher rep targets and less rest.

Of those three cardio days, I’d recommend that one of them be a high-intensity max effort type HIIT session. Another could be hard with a heart rate in the 80s, but not max effort. That third cardio day could be more metabolic conditioning, like kettlebell swings, sled pushes, rower, or SkiErg, and things like that.

Ramping up muscle growth

TM: What types of exercise are the most effective for ramping up muscle growth?

Steve Stonehouse: We’re moving into a great space right now in fitness, and it seems like every 10 or 15 years, there’s this new movement. CrossFit first popped up and led the charge for metabolic conditioning and no days off. It’s the idea that if you still feel good at the end of a workout, you didn’t train hard enough. I think we’re phasing out of that and into wanting to lift heavy again. People who wouldn’t have touched a barbell ten years ago are lifting heavy now.

Keep in mind that heavy is a relative term. You can get stronger with some lighter dumbbells, but there are limits to that. A blend is nice, but you do need to include those times when you’re lifting heavy and challenging yourself at a low rep target.

Say, I’m going to do barbell deadlifts for five reps. If I can do eight, then that weight is too light. It’s intended to be a weight that you can’t get 15 reps of. There are advantages to lifting heavy with low-rep targets and longer rest times. For example, we’re going to do four sets of five reps of barbell deadlifts with two minutes of rest in between sets. If you can do more than five or six reps, that weight is too light. There’s a lot of value in lifting heavy.

TM: We know it’s probably difficult to choose, but what are your top three favorite fat-burning, muscle-building exercises right now?

Steve Stonehouse:

• Barbell Zercher squat
• Barbell deadlift
• Flat barbell bench press

TM: How often should you work out to build muscle?

Steve Stonehouse: For the heavy session with five or six reps and longer rest periods, you could have a day each week that’s primarily focused on upper-body heavy strength training. Then, you could split it up and have another day that’s primarily focused on the lower body. You could do that, so you’re not in the gym for two hours; it’s more like a reasonable 45 or 50 minutes. If you were feeling ambitious, you could get a third one in toward the end of the week and have a bit of a mixed session where there’s not as much volume, but you have upper-body and lower-body focus. 

With that type of heavy volume, you’re going to need a decent amount of time to rest. So, if I were doing a heavy bench press today, I probably wouldn’t do that again until next week — same thing with squats, deadlifts, or any larger main lifts. 

Incorporating sufficient rest days and progressive overload

TM: Are rest days important for the best results?

Steve Stonehouse: Yes. Rest and recovery are two different things. A recovery session would include a bit of activity, but at a lower intensity. Recovery is restoring to a natural, healthy state, and rest is inactivity. 

TM: With resistance training, do you recommend incorporating progressive overload, where you gradually increase the weights over time to develop muscle strength and mass?Steve Stonehouse: 100%. We do strength training regularly at BFT. We have a portion of our performance app, and you can enter your five-rep max. On different days, the performance app tells you how much weight you should be lifting on that day to appropriately follow that progressive overload model.