Squats are an effective exercise for the lower body. They will sculpt, strengthen and build your quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings. At the same time, squats will work the entire body, burning a decent amount of calories to help you burn body fat. In this article, though, we will consider how many squats you have to do each day to lose belly fat.
How to Lose Belly Fat?
There is no such thing as losing belly fat exclusively. That is because you cannot lose fat from targeted areas of your body. So, when we are talking about losing belly fat, we are really just referring to losing weight because it will come off from all parts of the body evenly.
In order to achieve weight loss, you need to combine the following:
1. A reduced-calorie diet that achieves a daily negative calorie balance.
2. A high protein, high fat, low carb diet.
3. Exercise that burns calories.
Squats to Lose Belly Fat
The basic squat is a very good exercise choice when it comes to burning calories through exercise. The body weight squat, which you should begin with, can be done anywhere without any equipment. Then, in order to increase the intensity and the calorie burn, you can progressively increase the resistance with the use of resistance bands or weights.
Here is how to do the basic bodyweight squat:
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and pointing slightly outward. Your back should be in a neutral spine position with a natural arch. Keep your chest up and pull your shoulders back.
- From this starting position, hinge at the hips to drop your butt down and back slightly. Keep going until your quads are parallel to the floor.
- Press your heels into the floor as you push back to the start position.
For the best calorie-burning results, you should perform your squat reps smoothly, with no rest between reps. You should do relatively high rep sets of around 20 with minimal rest between them.
If you are already an experienced squatter, you are probably using the exercise to increase overall body strength and increase mass in your leg muscles. To do this, you’re probably going pretty heavy with sets ranging between 6 and 12 reps.
For the best fat loss effects, we recommend cutting back on the heavyweights and going for a squats workout that involves higher reps with a more moderate amount of resistance.
Try doing 5 sets of 20 reps with 50% of your one rep max, with just 2 minutes rest between sets. That will get you puffing like a steam train – and burning plenty of calories!
How Many Squats To Lose Belly Fat?
There is no magic number of squats that you need to do each day to lose belly fat, transform your body composition and achieve your dream body. If you were to do bodyweight squats for ten minutes, you would burn around 59 calories. We say around 59 calories because the exact number of calories you will burn depends on a number of factors, including your age, gender, and genetic factors that affect your metabolic rate.
So, if you were to do four 10-minute sessions throughout the day, you would burn around 240 calories through exercise each day. If you combine this with a 250-calorie deficit below your daily maintenance level, you will lose around 500 calories each day. That equates to 3500 calories per week, which is roughly equivalent to a pound of body fat.
So, by following a workout program involving four ten-minute sessions of squats in conjunction with reduced-calorie dieting, you should be able to lose about a pound of fat per week. That fat, as previously explained, will not all come from your belly but from all over the body.
When you increase the intensity of your workout routine by increasing the resistance, you will burn more calories. You should, therefore, progress from body weight to resistance bands and then onto barbell back squats. When you are doing barbell squats, use a weight that is around 50% of your one repetition maximum for sets of 20 reps.
Squat Form Tips
- Standing in the starting posture, spread your feet shoulder-width apart. Tense your abs, keeping your entire core tight.
- As you descend, do not allow your knees to cave in or extend outward; keep them in line with your hips.
- Push your butt back as you descend but maintain an upright torso position; never round your back.
- Try elevating your heels by standing on a 2 x 4 block of wood. This may help you to maintain an upright torso position.
- Breathe in on the descent and out on the push-back to the start position.
Should I Do The 100 Squats Per Day Routine?
The 100 squats per day routine is a popular routine with which many people have success as they work to lose body weight. The program is pretty simple; you do 100 squats every day for 30 days in a row.
If you are new to doing squats, we recommend easing into the program. If you do not, you will experience some pretty intense soreness through the quads. Start with a set of twenty reps twice per day, separated by several hours. Then build up over a couple of weeks until you are doing 5 sets of twenty over the course of the day.
Once you get to the 100-mark level, you can either stick with five sets of twenty or go for higher reps on each set. If you do maintain the five sets of 20 routines, reduce your rest time between each set. You will increase the calorie burn by only allowing yourself a couple of minutes per set.
If you really want to challenge yourself, you can try doing 100 reps of squats in a row. If you do give that a try, though, you should expect to experience some pretty intense quad pain.
The 30-day 100 squat challenge should be done in conjunction with a healthy diet that allows you to maintain a negative calorie balance. That means that you will be burning more calories than you take in each day. The extra energy needed will come from stored body fat.
Summary
There is no set number of calories that you need to do each day to lose body fat. However, doing 4 ten minute squat sessions each day while also reducing your caloric intake and following a high protein, high healthy fat, and low glycemic carb diet should result in an average weight loss of about a pound of fat per week.
