Fat loss occurs when your body expends more calories than you consume. In addition to a balanced diet, you must also do strength training regularly to increase muscle mass and increase your metabolism to help burn fat. Because everyone has different goals and physical capabilities, all exercise programs must adapt to each person, not the other way around.
Function
According to Vern Gambetta, director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems in Sarasota, Florida, your skeletal muscles work with the nervous system to produce movement. Those muscles are also the sites for fat metabolism and are a storage place for glycogen, which is stored carbohydrates.
Strength and power training can increase the size of your muscles and your circulation. Depending on the training method and your goals, they can also improve your muscular endurance, stamina, speed and agility.
Benefits
Having more muscle mass not only increases your fat-burning potential, but also provides protection for your organs and body against blunt trauma and makes your muscles appear more defined.
According to Ellen Coleman, a registered dietitian and the former nutrition consult for the Los Angeles Lakers, having a healthful body fat percentage decreases your risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension. A healthful body fat percentage for men is less than 20 percent, while for women, it is less than 30 percent.
Misconceptions
Many exercise equipment companies want you to believe that exercising a specific body part will reduce body fat. According to Coleman, the fat-burning process happens throughout your body and does not target certain areas. Doing resistance training increases the size of the muscle, making the area bigger.
Expert Insight
According to Gambetta, train your entire body and movement patterns rather than isolating body parts. In sports and daily activities, your body moves together and in different directions. No single muscle group works by itself. When you do total-body exercises, you save time, burn more calories, and avoid boredom in your workouts.
Sample Workouts
According to Gray Cook, a physical therapist and founder of Functional Movement Systems in Danville, Va., two common methods can help you increase muscle mass and burn fat at the same time.
If you want to increase strength and muscle mass, then do super sets, which entails doing two exercises of opposing movements consecutively without rest. This would be doing a pushing and pulling exercise, or an upper-body exercise and a lower-body exercise. For example, you can do a push-up and pull-up or a body weight squat and a dumbbell shoulder press.
If you wish to decrease body fat and improve muscle definition without too much muscle gain, then do circuit training, which requires five to eight exercises done consecutively without rest between exercises. Each exercise should train a different movement pattern. A sample workout would include kettlebell swings, medicine ball throws, lunges, jump-roping, push-ups and pull-ups.
References
- "Athletic Body in Balance"; Gray Cook; 2003
- "Athletic Development"; Vern Gambetta; 2006
- "Ultimate Sports Nutrition"; Ellen Coleman, RD; 2004
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