Why Strength Training Is The Best Weight Loss Tool
Hey Angels and Alphas,
Most of us know that weight training is one of the most powerful (and proven) weight loss tools, as it produces muscle mass that’s much hungrier for calories and therefore highly metabolic.
However, most people don’t realize that strength training is probably the best type of training for people who want to lose weight, as many muscles in your body function at much higher levels than your body fat.
If you’re looking to burn more calories and lose weight, here’s a simple answer: build muscle.
In the long-term, building muscle through resistance training helps you lose weight and actually keep it off.
Even though traditional fat loss training combines high-intensity intervals, fat-burning intervals, and a ton more cardio options, strength training won’t just help you lose weight. It will help you build muscle, look and feel better, get much stronger, and all of that while burning extra calories at rest due to the prevalence of metabolic tissue in the body.
And whether you choose bodyweight alone or extra weight, resistance training is an effective way to build muscle, burn fat, and do it all with one single activity. That being said, it still requires a different approach to increase muscle strength and size.
Strength training places large muscle groups in a state of combustion, increasing the production of hormones that help reduce body fat.
Hormones that help burn fat and grow muscle directly during exercise get elevated, and those are the same hormones that regulate metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and more.
In addition, strength training can help burn more calories during cardio workouts by increasing the number of calories you’ll burn during and after your otherwise normal cardio workout.
In fact, incorporating a weight and lifting routine to build lean muscle mass can make your cardio workouts even more efficient as long as you exercise to burn the same number of calories.
If you have difficulty getting under a layer of fat and your primary goal is to lose weight, you might want to lift weights first. Obviously, this is especially true for someone who focuses on losing weight, because your body starts burning fat before you start your cardio work.
What you may not realize is that both styles have their place in your routine, and you can do cardio and lift weights to lose weight.
In general, cardio burns more calories than weight training, but you can combine both by doing weight training first and finishing your workouts off with cardio.
Do the same weight loss workout for two or three weeks, and then start investing more time in your aerobic workout and doing more strength training. Once you have finished your cardio, you should do a cardio workout every two weeks for the rest of the week.
If, let’s say, you’re 100lbs overweight, and you’re looking to make a massive transformation, you should be aware that cardio alone is probably not going to cut it.
If you want better and faster results, you have to incorporate strength training and muscle building workouts in your weight loss regime, so you’re not just spending all your time trying to burn calories – you’re also improving your overall body composition which will help you get the body you desire much, much faster.
More muscle helps your body burn more fat than muscle, which is important if you want to lose weight and maintain your strength.
The inclusion of weight training can increase the intensity of your workout, which is ideal for losing weight. By adding elements of strength, cardio, and HIIT, you can perform a series of highly effective workouts to lose weight and build muscle in just a few weeks!
Strength training can help you manage and lose weight, and it can boost your metabolism, causing you to burn more calories. There are a number of other ways to lose weight that have not been mentioned, such as diet and exercise as a means to lose weight.
Endurance and strength training are excellent ways to burn calories, but to really improve your results, you also need to incorporate exercises that build muscle. Even though you don’t really feel like you’re losing weight when you’re lifting weights, you should remember that creating more metabolic tissue in the body means you’ll be burning more calories at rest, resulting in much faster overall weight loss.
And what about circuit training?
When doing circuit training, you want to use lighter weights and more reps than with weight loss, in contrast to typical strength training which is all about progressive overload.
This type of workout increases heart rate and strengthens muscles, making them more effective for weight loss. When performing whole-body movements in a workout three to four times a week, you’ll be giving your body both the stimulus it needs to grow muscles and the intensity it requires to burn a ton of calories.
This doubles the effect of exercise and builds muscle, which will speed up your weight loss – which is why circuit training has been touted as one of the best weight loss training variations… and it’s all because of the mixture of cardio and strength training.