You’ll burn loads of fat with the 20-rep killer squat workout with a Smith machine.
Though Smith machine squats aren’t the best for building huge quad muscles, this equipment can fire up your body’s fat burning engines.
Smith Machine Workout
Perform 20 parallel (half) squats with a rapid pace. Pay very close attention to your thighs to make sure they actually hit parallel.
The rapid pace may fool some folks into thinking they’re hitting parallel when in fact, they’re falling just short of it. Explode up from each squat.
It’s not necessary to rise all the way back up after each squat. If you come up a little short, that’s fine; your muscles are under constant tension this way.
However, if your style is to go all the way back up, do not lock out the knees and do not hang there, either; immediately come back down into the next squat.
Do the 20 reps as quickly as possible while hitting parallel for every rep and keeping your lower back arched.
At the end of 20 reps, you should be breathless, like you just ran fast up a hill.
Rest 45 seconds and repeat four more times for five total sets, with 45 seconds in between each one.
This doesn’t mean that at the end of 45 seconds is when you step under the bar to get positioned. This means that the time it takes you to get set under the bar is included in the 45 seconds.
These short rests are crucial for maximal fat burning. The breathlessness is also a key feature of optimizing the fat burning process.
And though the routine can be completed in about five minutes, the fat burning will continue afterwards: post-exercise fat-burning.
What if you’re not breathless?
Then the bar didn’t have enough weight on it. You will need to experiment with this. The rapidity of the reps makes the exercise more difficult.
Hitting parallel will also make things harder for people used to doing incomplete half squats.
You should be so out of breath that you can’t complete a sentence.
This Smith machine killer squat routine is NOT for beginners, no matter how badly they want to burn off the fat.
These type of Smith machine squats, with their short rests, are for conditioned people.
Don’t assume that it doesn’t make any difference if you’re a few inches above parallel. For 20 explosive reps, coming a few inches short makes a whopping difference.
So either use a heavier weight load for the next set (and this may take several sets to figure out; you don’t want to go too heavy), and/or hit parallel for every rep.
If the resistance is too heavy, you won’t be able to explode. You may be able to complete 20 reps, but they’ll lack rapidity and thrust.
The explosiveness yields the cardio component and is key to burning fat.
Though the emphasis is on burning fat, you’ll find that this Smith machine killer squat routine will dramatically strengthen your legs and knees, plus shape and contour the muscles.
