There are different levels of nuance to that questions, but to make it clear from the get go:

In general, your training is NOT here to make you lose fat.

If this is what you are expecting from your training, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Training is here for three reasons.

First and foremost, and this is really the essential point, training is here to help you build muscles and prevent muscle loss in a fat-loss phase.

Secondly, training is here to improve your mobility. Mobility not as in “I want to do a split” but mobility as in “I want to keep the ability to move”. This is not something that you think about right now whilst you are still young, but this will become relevant as you age.

Learning how to train and move better is easier when you don’t have to regain some function in your joints that disappear because you didn’t take care of it for two or three decades.

Lastly, training is also here to improve your metabolism. Your muscles are the storage organ for carbs. Storing those carbs works way better when your muscles are trained, and also when you have more muscles.

With that in mind, training does help you burn a bit more calories, and this of course plays a role in fat loss.

If you want to have a bigger effect in that regard whilst making sure you respect the previously mentioned points, here are the best ways to go about it:

1. increase the cardio-vascular demand of your training
2. increase the amount of work being done in your training without increasing the length of the session

Both of those options require shortening the rest period between your sets. You make sure that you can still work by either combining different body parts or working on the same body part.

Here’s an example for combining different body parts:
A1: Lat Pulldown – 4×10, 2010, 10s
A2: Leg Extension – 4×10, 2010, 10s
A3: Lateral Raises – 4×10, 2010, 10s
A4: Cable Crunches – 4×10, 2010, 180s

Here’s an example working on the same body part:
A1: Bent Over Lateral Raises, 4×12-15, 2010, 10s
A2: Lateral Raises, 4×10-12, 2010, 10s
A3: Shoulder Press, 4×8-10, 2010, 180s

You can get pretty creative with how you combine all of this.

Keep in mind two things here: with this kind of method you are going to do more work and this requires more recovery! If your sleep and nutrition are not on point, don’t do this.

Also, it will be in most cases easier to manipulate your nutrition to get the desired effect of fat loss, as it is easier to track.

That being said, if you want to try it, give it a shot, as this kind of training is at the same time quite challenging but also refreshing and, dare I say it, fun 🙂

Love & Strength
Dragana

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