A Good Workout System to Lose Weight & Build Your Core

All the situp variations in the world are useless if you can't show off your flat stomach. Getting a perfect core involves a combination of building up the muscles in your midsection and losing the weight that covers them up. To achieve this, your workout routine should include activities that raise your heart rate to burn fat and work your core to build muscle.

Heart Rate

Elevating your heart rate through exercise is essential for blasting fat. As a bonus, you will also prolong your lifespan, according to a study published in "Archives of Internal Medicine." Your body burns fat when your heart rate is between 60 and 80 percent of its maximum. To determine your heart rate maximum, subtract your age from 220. Pick up a heart rate monitor to wear while you work out to ensure that you are in the fat-burning zone. Any favorite activity of yours, including hiking, rowing, swimming or bicycling, can help you lose weight if you keep your heart rate elevated.

Do the Math

The Mayo Clinic recommends that you get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate activity just to stay healthy, but you need more work to aggressively lose weight. Different activities burn varying amounts of calories over the course of a workout. Burn approximately 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound. For example, if you want to lose 1 pound a week by running, run at 8 mph -- which burns about 861 calories per hour -- for approximately 90 minutes three times a week.

Build Your Muscles

Ideally, you should work out five to six days a week. Once you section off three days for cardio, that leaves two or three days for strength-training exercises. An effective workout system includes both, and you should alternate days. To strengthen your core, you need to exercise four major muscle groups. Your abdomen on the front of your stomach is targeted by situps and crunches. Your obliques -- along the sides of your ribs -- are worked by oblique crunches and side planks. To do either of these exercises, roll onto one side and then prop yourself up on one elbow. Raise your hips off the floor to start a side plank. Perform oblique crunches by lying on your side and lifting your upper body using your side muscles. The pelvis gets pumped when you do exercises for your lower stomach, such as lying on your back, lifting your legs and doing reverse crunches by lifting your butt off the floor using only your abs. Exercise your lower back with superman lifts, where you lie on your stomach and lift your chest off the floor.

Strength Routine

Aim to do at least one exercise for each of the four muscle groups during your strength-training days, for approximately 15 reps. Don't race through an exercises; practice good form. You'll be more effective doing 15 slow, painful situps than 100 quick, small crunches. For smaller movements -- such as crunches and reverse crunches -- do three sets instead of one. Always give yourself at least one day off a week to recover. Muscles need recovery time to grow.

Considerations

Unfortunately, all your hard work will go down the drain without a proper diet as part of your workout system. Use a healthy diet and cut unwanted calories from sugary foods to help you reach your preferred caloric deficit. If you eliminate 500 calories a day, that's a pound a week. Don't overdo the exercise and dieting, however. It can be unhealthy to regularly lose more than 2 pounds a week.