The other day I was reading an article from some fitness “guru” giving great advice on the number of reps and sets of exercises to gain certain muscles and burn fat.

Although great information, this information is useless if someone has no motivation to move.  At the end of the day, or beginning of the day, what counts is if you are moving or not moving and if you have the motivation to move or not.

If you’re not motivated, what good would all that other information be? Well, about as useful as a car with no gasoline.

Then I began thinking of ways that I have kept myself moving through the years while friends and former football players lost the desire to stay fit. These simple yet powerful ideas kept me moving year after year and now I want to share them with you.

That is why a few months ago, I sat down to write a series of Secrets to Stoke Your Fat Blast Furnace. Yes, they will help you move away from the flat screen television or up from your computer chair to move your body.  If you are thinking these Secrets are only for the super motivated — think again, because I wrote the book and I still have trouble staying motivated!

Every morning I wake up feeling like a semi collided with me — my back and shoulders ache.

This is the result of the thousands of tackles I made over the course of my career, now catching up with me. If these motivators help me to move — as sore as I am — then they’ll surely work for you.

Before you know it, your pants will feel a few sizes too big and your face will look like it did ten years ago.

So let’s take a look at one of the many secrets to blast fat.

Variety is the Spice of Fitness.  Any mountain climber will tell you there are multiple paths to the top of any summit.  The same is true for getting fit. Don’t learn one way to get the job done. Use many. The more you know and understand, the more options you’ll have to implement into your daily diet of fitness.

Artists are great at staying engaged. Typically, most artists know more than one style of art. An illustrator has had experience painting at least in college. A painter most likely is also a photographer. Having all these interests allows the passion to be as fresh as the first day you began.

The same is true for fitness. You never get bored when you have multiple ways to exercise. Plus, you reduce your chances of injury by not doing the same movements over and over again. The tendons and muscles are well developed, but less likely to break down from repeating the same exercise. So the key is variety; a variety of exercises and a variety of instruction.

For example, I have a 60-year-young client, Henrique, who looks half his age. He has invested in multiple fitness programs besides mine, all with different and unique angles meant to sizzle the fat cells.

Henrique used three exercise programs to effectively reduce his weight. These provided the variety he needed to keep his routine fresh and effective in order to hit his ideal weight loss goal.  Here is a summary of how his varied exercise program achieved the results he wanted.

“On October 1st, I weighed 189 lbs with a 37-inch waist. My goal was to reach 176 lbs and have a 34-inch waist.  I started my program with a mix of bodyweight exercises — Matt Furey’s Combat Conditioning and Brooks Kubik’s Body Weight Training and your Linebacker Fitness course.

I ended all my daily routines with rope skipping and exercised at least 5 times a week, and up to 7 times.  I started with skipping 250 reps (5 x 50) and pretty soon started cranking up the skips, mostly with the basic steps.  In a few weeks time, I was doing 1500. Next 2000. And now 3000 skips. Sometimes, on weekends, I skip twice — once in the morning and once before dinner.

On December 31st, my weight was 177 lbs (1 lb short of my target, but still a reduction of 12 lbs) and my waist was 34 inches (right on target).  I was also sporting a 6-pack, something I don’t remember seeing for the past 30 years.

By the way, I’m going to be 60 years “young” in April. I’m healthy, fit and my energy level is pretty high, and folks, please believe me when I say that skipping rope is much easier than it looks and infinitely more forgiving on your tendons than middle to long distance running.”

If Henrique can do it, so can you.  Use a variety of exercises and coaches to get you lean and mean. Variety is the spice of life and the spice of burning fat. It’s one great idea to blast you off your chair or couch and into fat burning.

Now it’s your turn. Think of three personal motivators that fire you up. Write them down on a 3×5 card and use them to heat up your fat blast furnace. And I’ll be back next time to fill you in on a few more ideas.

[Ed. Note: Vince Palko is the author of Linebacker Fitness and creator of The Super Body Blitz and Triple Your Endurance. Vince has been enshrined in both his college, Bowling Green State University's and his high school's Hall of Fame for his performance on the football field.  Vince has a FREE fitness newsletter you can sign up for at www.VincePalko.com.]

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