Lose Belly Fat Fast

Posts Tagged ‘weight training’

Weight training is great for weight loss, in fact it’s one of the best methods to lose those last few pesky pounds. It is also great for getting a toned body with lean muscles. Unfortunately many women don’t take advantage of this excellent training regime. Dare I say it many women are afraid to even touch weights! I guess it’s a combination of the media telling women that they need to look like a walking skeleton to be considered “beautiful” size 2 super modles being photoshoped to look even thinner. And last but not least the believe held by many women that by just touching weights they will immediately become as muscular as Schwarzenegger.

The last point is the one I wish to examine more closely. Although suffice to say that you don’t need to have a body of a runway model to be considered beautiful, if anything having some lean muscle mass will make you more beautiful. But back to the last point, why are so many women afraid that that will look like professional body builders if they do any exercise with weights? I don’t know. I mean you have a whole gym full of guys who want to “look big” and most of them don’t look big at all. Combine it with the fact that men have much higher testosterone levels than women, and I am truly at a loss as to where women get this notion.

None the less it is a concern to many women and one that keeps them away from using and reaping the benefits of weight training. So it’s probably a good idea to address it – Ladies, unless you are working out with weights 3 hours a day or more, 5 days a week you will never look too muscular. Even if you are working out 3 hours a day 5 days a week chances are you won’t get anywhere close to pro female body builders (What are steroids, Alex.)

So stop being concerned about becoming too muscular and give weight training a try. Of course, I mean real weight training not those pink 1 pound dumbbells. You want to do compound exercise with about 70-80% of your max. This will both give you a great work out that will burn a lot of calories and stimulate your body to build lean muscles.

Weight training is a great method, don’t be afraid to use it in your work outs and reap the benefits it provides!

This is a part 2 post and you can read the first one here: Weight Training Good For Weight Loss?

Weight training can be very effective for weight loss for much the same reasons that interval training is – it allows you to get a good work out in a relatively short amount of time no matter how good (or bad) your fitness level is. It also builds muscles and is the exercise of choice if you want to get a tone body or trying to lose the last few pounds of stomach fat.

Now, because your goal is to lose weight (and get a toned body) in the shortest amount of time you want to do exercise that burn the most calories. That means you want to do compound movements rather than isolated. Compound movements involve more muscles which results in more calories burned. In addition compound movements are better for over all fitness, because they involve several muscles you build up all muscle groups simultaneously and don’t run into a situation where one muscles group is stronger than the other which can make you more susceptible to an injury.

Sounds good, but I never did weight training – what exactly are compound movements?
Compound movements are exercise that involve several muscle groups, for example a dead lift is a compound movement, much like a squat, on the other hand a bicep curl is an isolated movement that only involves biceps. So, avoid doing exercise for isolated muscles and do compound exercise like dead lifts or sauqts for the best results.

Keep in mind though that weight training requires technique in order to stay injury free. So start with very, very low weights and learn the technique before increasing weight. I would recommend going to a gym and seeing if they have a pro there that can help you learn the correct way to do those exercise. Do make sure that said pro actually know what he or she is doing and actually have experience in weight training.

Also, I would highly advise you to do those exercise with free weights and avoid machines. Most machines have several flaws in their design which makes using them for complex compound exercise a bad idea, as you will likely injure yourself at some point.