In combination with a healthy diet and cardiovascular exercise, a weight-lifting routine can maximize your fat-loss goals. Muscle building increases your resting metabolic rate, which means you will constantly burn calories throughout the day. It has been estimated that every pound of muscle you gain will burn roughly 40 to 50 calories daily. Check with your doctor before making changes in your exercise, particularly if you have a health condition.
Proper Technique
When proper technique is used during weight training, it is highly effective for losing fat, increasing strength and increasing muscle tone. Incorrect weight training technique can lead to sprains, strains, fractures -- and frustration from not seeing results. Working with a weight-training specialist like a personal trainer can help you to become more familiar with proper technique.
Reps and Weight
The number of consecutive repetitions you perform within a set of exercise must contain enough to fatigue your muscles energy stores temporarily. To focus on fat burning, your rep range should stay within 12 to 15 repetitions. The amount of weight you lift directly influences the difficulty of each repetition. MayoClinic.com suggests using a weight that tires your muscles at 12 repetitions and increasing the amount of weight as you get stronger and the lifting subsequently gets easier.
Circuit Training
Circuit training is a version of high-intensity resistance training designed to be short, often with rapid movement and minimal rest to the next exercise. A traditional circuit routine can burn anywhere from 600 calories and up. Circuit training can be completed two to four times per week.
Supersets
When two or more complementing exercises are performed back to back, it is called a superset. This type of training increases productivity by condensing workout time. Because your heart rate remains high during superset training, the workouts can burn up to 30 percent more calories than traditional training alone.
Member Comments