As a Personal Trainer, one of the questions I hear most frequently is, “Which muscle groups should I exercise together?” The answer to that depends on how much fat you are aiming to burn.

If your goal is to increase muscle tone while decreasing body fat, cross training (ie. Spreading your workout among more than one muscle group) is the right choice for you.

A popular misconception is that each workout should concentrate on only two or three muscle groups. People seem to think that it's inefficient to target many muscles in one day. However, unless your goal is hypertrophy (muscle growth), total body workouts are the least time consuming way of burning maximum calories. The scientific explanation for this is if too much stress is put on one muscle group, your body will produce lactic acid, which slows down the burning of fat. Dividing one workout between all major muscle groups keeps lactic acid build-up to a minimum, making it easier for your body to burn fat. So if you're looking to burn fat, make sure that your workouts are not concentrated on any one part of the body.

Here are some guidelines to plan you total body workout:

• Spend at least 10 minutes warming up and stretching. To prevent muscle damage, your muscles must be warm and loose before lifting. Also, cold muscles don't stretch.
  
  
• Spend between 5 and 7 minutes total on each body part. It takes about three minutes for a muscle to become aerobically efficient. I recommend doing 2 exercises for each body part. Each exercise should consist of 3 sets of 12-15 reps, with 30 seconds rest between sets.
  
  
• Keep your heart rate in the fat burning zone. By staying in the fat burning zone (60%-75%) while lifting, you're killing two birds with one stone. You're getting your cardio done while weight training. Kind of like doing a bench press on the elliptical.

Reward yourself with a high protein drink upon completion. Would you put economy gas in your race car after you've just taken the checkered flag? I don't think so. Protein will help your muscles recover while creating lean muscle mass - the stuff great bodies are made from. One pound of lean muscle mass burns seven times more calories than does one pound of fat at rest. Why not turn as much of your body as possible into lean muscle, so it will burn the fat from your body while you are resting? Because your metabolism remains elevated for about one hour after a 45 minute workout in the zone, the protein is quickly absorbed into your body. It also curbs your hunger to keep you from feeling ravenous when you get back to the office. A healthy protein shake will keep your co-worker's candy dish safe for another afternoon.