One of the most common questions people ask me as a personal trainer is: “Hey Jam, can I turn the fat on my body into muscle?” To which I break the unfortunate truth to them. If your dad Joe walks out of the living room and your mum Jane walks into the room, did Joe magically transform into Jane? No, it’s impossible. Why? Because they’re two different people.

It’s for that same reason that it is scientifically, physiologically impossible to convert body fat into muscle tissue – they are two different types of cells, just like oil and water are two different types of liquids.

This is still one of the most common misconceptions among female gym-goers, especially those new to weight training. They’ll often hold back from using a challenging weight on their gym exercises, or skip many upper body exercises altogether, due to a fear that it will make their appearance look overly muscular.  This couldn’t be further from the truth! Here are 3 main reasons why: Biology, Food, and Time.

Free-weight training involves resistance exercises using equipment that you can move freely in any direction, such as dumbbells, barbells, and kettlebells. They allow you to add weighted resistance to your movements in an almost unlimited range of motion. Machine exercises are usually done seated/static on fixed equipment with a limited range of motion, and often use assistance from the machine to help you move the resistance. While machine exercises can be a great introduction if you’re new to weight training, it’s important to transition to free weights as soon as you can safely.

Compound exercises are exercises that require several muscle groups and multiple joints to work together. In contrast, isolation exercises target a specific muscle and often only utilize one joint. For example a Barbell Squat is a compound exercise that requires the muscles in your glutes, thighs and core to work together and utilizes movement in your anke, knee and hip joints. The Seated Leg Extension is an isolation exercise as it focuses specifically on the quad muscle and only uses movement at the knee joint.

One of the things I cringe at most when I see people training in the gym is when they start a new exercise by immediately going to a heavy weight on the very first set. For example the guy who lies down on the bench press and proceeds to load up the bar with 80% of his maximum capacity, without any warm-up reps. This is a sure-fire way to get injured. The reason being when your muscles are still cold at the beginning of your workout, they won’t be able to go through the full range of motion or activate fast enough to handle heavy weight safely. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done that weight in a previous workout; if you go from 0 to 100 on any weights exercise without a warm-up, it will lead to sub-par performance at best and a recipe for disaster at worst.

Working out is not supposed to be a leisurely stroll in the park.

To push your body to its potential and to burn more calories, don't take long breaks between exercises. 

Rest no more than 30seconds after each set or exercise to keep your body shedding calories and body fat. 

If you're doing your own fat-burning circuit, try this:

- Pick at least 6 full-body exercises performed consecutively

- Use a 2:1 work/rest ratio for each exercise, eg. if a set of Squats lasts 40 secs then rest no more than 20secs before moving on to the next exercise. If the set of say 30 squats takes you 60secs then rest no more than 30secs etc.

- Aim to burn at least 600 calories by the end of your workout.

If you do at least 3 of these fat-burning circuits per week, combined with a healthy diet including a moderate calorie deficit, you should see results of 0.5kg-1kg of weight loss per week. 

You head to the gym because you know that exercise burns calories and helps you to shed extra kilos. 

Knowing this, you may think that losing weight should be easy with enough exercise. However the truth is that if you aren't accustomed to exercising and are out of shape, beginning an exercise program may actually lead to an initial increase in your weight. 

This fact, however, shouldn't stop you from exercising, as you’ll eventually turn the weight corner and start losing. 

What is it about exercise that may cause some people to gain instead of lose weight?