So, now we've hit the new year most people's goals will be to get rid of that holiday weight and get back into shape. Queue the endless streams of joggers and treadmill demons. Whilst running and other forms of cardio do indeed burn calories and therefore eliminate fat - it's extremely difficult to shed a decent amount of fat through cardio alone. In many ways, weight training (for males and females) is an easier and more effective way of burning that unwanted fat. The first, and most key point that I'm going to introduce to you; is that weight training burns calories before and after a session; whilst cardio exercises only burn fat for the total duration of the exercise. Now its important to note at this point that recently people have become to doubt this approach, but its no secret that there's millions of people that support the same views as myself. The reason for weight training being more effective is that a high muscle mass burns fat during every day activities simply due to the basic amount of energy that it takes to use the muscles. This is also true for periods of rest. In addition to this - there's what is known as the 'afterburn' effect. This is a direct product of an extremely high intensity workout. The only problem with the afterburn is it is extremely hard to achieve - it refers to a state where after any workout, your body's metabolism increases. To get to this state however, you have to achieve a ridiculously high intensity throughout your entire workout; which is no problem to those who rep to failure and give 110% as standard. To keep that kind of intensity up is difficult, but clearly thoroughly rewarding. Please don't mistake this post for me telling people to get into the gym and start becoming bodybuilders; you don't have to lift heavy weights to weight train. If you want to see how effective weight training is for females, all you have to do is head over to Lucy Doyle's Facebook page - www.facebook.com/lucycdoyle. In all honestly my inspiration for this post comes from a post from her page not too long ago; she started out on her own weight loss transformation and coupled weight training with a clean diet and the results she's seen, in the words of one of my friends are 'tremendous'.
In my opinion, weight training is the main way to go when trying to achieve either fat loss or muscle gain. However I'm not condemning cardio as a form of exercise. Obviously those who are engaged in any form of sport (myself included) will need to keep up some form of cardio routine to keep their fitness and stamina up. My own personal approach is to combine 2-3 sessions of cardio (Boxing/Hockey) in a week with pure weight training and a small amount of cardio through weights (My warm up). Personally I've found this approach to be very effective, though I will be increasing my cardio in order to gain a higher level of fitness for boxing. In other words, I've fit every approach into my training as my boxing drills even contain a hell of a biometric workout. Though there's more of an emphasis on weight training over cardio. I'm not saying to forget about the cardio completely, I am saying that maybe its time to up that weight training and start experimenting with cardio through weights. If anyone wants to try a cardio with weights program, there's one on the earlier posts in this workout named 'Killer Workout' - however if I get enough interest in it I'm more than happy to adapt it into an entry level workout to work your way up to the intense one. Obviously if you're just looking to build muscle and not keep a decent level of cardiovascular fitness then heavy weight training is the way forward, however mixing in some cardio with weights, even if its just for a warmup (A prime example of this is Terry Crews' '24s' warm up) can be highly beneficial with regard to getting yourself pumped for a workout and hitting your entire body to get it ready for some intense weight training.
Well I hope this information has been useful to you all. Obviously I'm not saying that changing your workout style and nothing else can help you lose weight, you have to change your diet to help yourself! The best way to tackle a change in lifestyle is to get as much information as possible from a range of sources. With that in mind I want to direct you all to my personal favourite sources that have helped me infinitely -
Fitness Made EZ - www.facebook.com/FitnessMadeEZ; @FitnessMadeEZ; www.youtube.co.uk/glyphmedia; www.flexdem.com
JV Fitness & Nutrition - www.facebook.com/pages/JV-Fitness-Nutrition
Lucy Doyle - www.facebook.com/lucycdoyle
The Hodgetwins/ TwinMuscleWorkout - www.youtube.co.uk/user/twinmuscleworkout
Also can you all please like my page on Facebook - www.facebook.com/a.wright.fitness and direct any feedback there. Stay tuned for more posts in the near future! Until next time,
Train hard, but train safe,
Alex.
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