One of the biggest hurdles I have to jump through with parents who are interested in losing weight and how to lose belly fat is the question that revolves around my 10 minute workouts.

They want to know if 10-minute workouts are long enough.

They want to know if they can really lose belly fat by exercising for just 10 minutes.

I get it. In fact, I understand it quite well; because I was one of those people who for so many years thought you had to exercise for at least 45 minutes to get any kind of fat loss effect.

The 10-minute workouts were just too…unbelievable.

But something happened to me over the years…

…I studied, I learned how the body works and how it burns fat, plus I became one of those people who have more important things to worry about than trying to carve out chunks of time every day to exercise.

I’m a father, business owner, and husband, and I just didn’t want to have to constantly stress about missing a fat loss workout.

Now when people ask me if 10-minute workouts are long enough, I always ask them a question.

My question is “Why do you think you have to train more than 10 minutes?”

Seriously, does anything magical happen after you’ve been training for 20 or 30 minutes? Is there a switch to burn fat?

A common response is “10-minute workouts just don’t burn enough calories for weight loss.”

OK that is good. That’s wrong, and I’ll tell you why.

First of all, you are focusing on the wrong numbers. The number of calories you burn while exercising shouldn’t matter. It is too small a period of time, no matter if it is 10 minutes, 20 or 50 minutes.

The numbers to ask yourself about are how many calories you can burn while NOT exercising. Your body should be burning a lot of calories while you’re not exercising, because your workout caused such a “metabolic upheaval” that it needs to work hard to get back on track.

That’s called COPD and that’s why my 10 minute workouts are so effective.

The way I design my 10 minute fat loss workouts and the way they are planned is that if you consistently do them day after day, and week after week, your body revs up for HOURS after you finish exercising, which means you burn hundreds more calories while NOT exercising.

That’s the key to an effective 10-minute workout, and that’s why you’ll lose belly fat.

But how do I design a 10-minute workout that really kick-starts COPD?

What’s wrong with most of the fat loss training programs you find in the bookstore or in magazines is that they focus on too many “beach muscle” or “mirror muscle” exercises. They spend way too much time on isolation moves because they know you want those…

…despite the fact that those exercises are largely useless when it comes to helping you lose weight and get rid of stomach fat.

They focus on crunches (or any other ab exercise that “isolates” that muscle and makes it “burn”), bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, chest flyes, leg extensions, etc.

The problem is that those exercises just don’t increase EPOC, which means your metabolism will return to normal when you’re done with the workout and you’ll continue to struggle to lose weight and lose belly fat.

The right way to design a fat loss workout, the way I design my 10 minute workouts, is to focus on full body exercises, full body workouts and “big” moves that you think will burn a lot of calories in those 10 minutes and during hours. after you are done with your training.

Take this little fat loss circuit workout for example:

1A) Pushups – 12 reps
1B) Lunge DB – 8 per leg
1C) Ironing – 30 seconds
1D) Incline Dumbbell Row – 8 reps
1E) DB Push Press – 10 reps

Do as many total circuits as you can in 10 minutes and voila.

That 10-minute workout works your entire body and really revs up your metabolism.

So even while you’re driving to work, sitting on the couch at home, or playing with your kids, you’ll still be burning fat from your 10-minute fat loss workout earlier in the day.

That’s the key to a good 10 minute workout, and to be totally honest, that’s the key to any good fat loss workout.