Q: hi Mike. i am looking to lose the fat on and around my chest, i am looking into buying a rowing machine as i have heard that that, along with push ups is an extremely effective way to lose the fat. is this true?

Richard

A: Rowing machine is a good piece of equipment and it will allow you to build up your back muscles a bit if they're languishing now, but as far as fat loss it will not be significantly better than other forms of cardio work (such as running).

Pushups are a good exercise also, but by themselves (or even with a rowing machine) they do not make a good complete training program because once you get good at them (and you will -- eventually you'll be able to do dozens in a row without) they will be closer to cardio than to heavy weight training. So in the end both of your exercises -- rowing and pushups -- will provide good cardio/light resistance benefits for the upper body but you won't have any heavy resistance exercises which as actually best fat burners out there as I explain in my fat loss article.

Remember that even though you want to lose specifically chest fat, it is absolutely impossible to trick your body into targeting chest fat directly. Your body will lose fat from wherever it 'wants to' and it will include chest fat as well, but you have no way of influencing your body into burning more chest fat than it would otherwise. So your goal should be to have the most effective overal body fat loss program possible. To accomplish that, all other things being equal I would simply do running for cardio and spend the rowing machine money on getting a set of dumbbells for home and doing this program or maybe joining a gym and have access to even more equipment.

Finally, don't forget that your diet will matter at least as much as your training in how much fat you lose. So to conclude, you should certainly see some results if you went with rowing machine + pushups, but you can obtain much better results by including heavy weight training and improving your diet.