I figured that many of you will be trying to lose some bodyfat now that January 1st has come, but you may not have the best plan laid out.  Treadmill?  Good luck with that.  Elliptical, same thing.  Take a look around your gym and notice if the people on these machines have changed their physiques at all during the past decade.  If you go the ‘normal’ route, you are going to wind up just as fat and probably have sore joints.  Slow, long distance training is terrible.  Yes, I said it.  And before all the distance athletes start emailing me, if you are competitive distance athlete, then obviously you have to train this way (not nearly as much as you think though), but for somebody trying to get in shape and get ripped, it is terrible.  I can go on and on about this, but instead, I will highlight a much more effective strategy that will only take 4 minutes per day at the end of your workout.  Tabata is a Japanese researcher that found a way to improve people’s aerobic and anaerobic threshold in a short time.  And a very nice side-effect is the Post Exercise Oxygen Debt that it will cause, which means you are going to attack your body fat stores.  The protocol is 20 seconds of sprinting with 10 seconds of a light jog, repeated for 8 bouts or 4 minutes.  It is extremely tough and hard to do.  If you live in the northeast and aren’t one to go out in the hours before dawn when it is 10 degrees, then you can follow this protocol in the weight room, with an exercise that uses a ton of muscle, like the front squat (thanks Dan John:)).  Try it and get back to me, or email me if you want to know more.  I’m getting sick of typing for the day.