Tuesday, December 16, 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.

In a twist which may surprise many of you out there reading this, it has even been shown to be more effective than cardiovascular exercise! That is, a specific type of resistance training. Today, we will explain exactly what it is and how you can do.

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

Before you go to the gym with ideas of lifting light weights for millions of reps in a Body Pump class, it's important to understand that high intensity resistance training does not involve going light at all. In fact, it's one of the most difficult weight lifting protocols in existence today. But that also makes it one of the most effective.

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

Now, you could see that as a disadvantage if your main goal is fat loss - why wouldn't you want to burn fat as your primary fuel?

The whole process is known as E.P.O.C. or the after burn effect. By using carbs to fuel our hard gym work, the body then becomes very protective of our few remaining carb stores while we refuel after a workout. But it must burn something in order to help the body continue to function. That's when we switch to losing body fat!

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.

But how do you actually do this style of training?



It's beauty is in it's simplicity. Or rather, it's simple to explain - it's not simple to do! The first step is to look at what other people are doing when they train with weights at your local gym. The chances are, they will lift for eight to ten repetitions then rest for a couple of minutes before repeating the process. This is pretty standard gym behavior.

But it is not H.I.R.T. and it is not the most effective training style for fat loss.

High intensity resistance training involves reducing rest periods but keeping your training hard and heavy. Pair compound lifts together and work through sets of three of four moves in one circuit. You'll get more done in your session than those taking vast rest periods after every set, and you will notice significantly greater fat loss results in the weeks which follow.

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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