Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Can You Lose Weight By Lifting Weights?

By Russ Howe


If you have ever asked someone to explain how to burn body fat, the chances are slim that weight training came up in the list of responses.

But body fat is indeed one of the first things to go into overdrive when weight training is used consistently and properly.

Those who are keen gym enthusiasts may already know this, but the majority of gym goers have no idea and often miss out on the many benefits hiding within resistance training because they mistakenly believe it's not for them. However, several key studies show weight based training to be even better than aerobic exercise for burning calories.

The specific type of resistance training referred to here is H.I.R.T., otherwise known as high intensity resistance training.

However, if you want to burn fat you do not need to do endless reps with light weights. This does go against the gym myths from decades before us, but clinical studies prove that pushing yourself with heavier weights and for fewer reps will yield greater results for you. So dispel any thoughts of fitness classes which encourage you to lift empty barbells and ankle weights. To get the most from resistance training, we must go heavier.

Whenever we lift weights we create an anabolic response which tells the body to use carbohydrates as our main fuel source during training.

Do not let that fact fool you.

That's because this anabolic response creates a procedure within the human body known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. This flips the fuel burning rule book out of the window and places our carbohdrate stores on temporary lockdown, forcing us to use fat as our primary source of fuel in the hours which follow a gym workout. Now you should be beginning to see the real advantages of high intensity weight lifting...

By training so hard we use carbs as our primary fuel in the gym, we allow ourselves the luxury of using fat as our primary fuel for up to sixteen hours after we finish training! That's considerably more fat than we could burn if we stayed at a low intensity and used it as our primary fuel source while training.

So how would somebody go about using this training protocol?



While the fat burning process your body endures may sound complex, the training style is certainly not. Take a look how most people use weights in your local gym and you will see how many people are missing out on potentially incredible results by taking too much rest, talking in groups between sets, and so on. That's normal gym practice.

If you are aiming for high intensity resistance training, however, that is not what you should be doing.

Put two or even four exercises together into a series of mini circuits throughout your workout. Avoid performing single set exercises followed by two minutes checking your phone or updating your social media status. Perform exercises back-to-back without rest, reducing your workload time but improving your productivity.

Studies confirm that not only is H.I.R.T. great for fat loss, it is even superior to aerobic cardio exercise. Given that this is by far the most popular training method in mainstream gyms today, there are a lot of people reading this article who will have just discovered valuable new training information. Have fun implementing it.




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