Weight Training Tips and Articles

Weight Train To Boost Your Metabolism

January 5, 2008 on 3:34 am | In Weight Training Routines, Cardiovascular Training, Fat Loss, Metabolism |

  While  people usually try to burn body fat by dieting and doing cardiovascular exercise, many don’t realize that weight training can also help them get rid of it. Adding muscle size through weight training will actually raise your metabolism - the rate at which the body burns fat.

  Since weight training is an anaerobic way of exercising, your metabolic rate may not get a huge boost while you are doing it. But, when you gain muscle mass that extra muscle will give you a higher resting metabolism. Muscle needs energy to sustain itself, so with more muscle size your body actually will burn more calories even when you aren’t exercising.

  Doing some weight training every other day is a great way to start gaining some muscle size. You don’t have to train for 3 hours a day to see results. In fact, if you weight train too much you may end up overtraining, which may actually cause you to lose muscle if you keep doing it. Losing muscle will have the opposite effect on your metabolism than gaining it - your resting metabolic rate will slow down, making it harder to lose body fat. Keep your weight training workouts at about an hour per session and split up your routine (training certain muscle groups at one workout and other muscle at the next workout). splitting your weight training routine will allow you to train each muscle with a lot of intensity and get plenty of recovery between workouts. Eventually, you may want to weight train 4 or 5 days per week and split your routine 3 ways.

  To further enhance your chances of losing body fat you can do your cardio training after your weight training workouts. Weight training depletes your muscles of glycogen, or stored carbohydrates. If your do cardiovascular exercise after you weight train you’ll be burning more fat than carbs from the beginning of your cardio workout.

  Whether you’re a man or a woman weight training will enhance the shape of your body so you’ll look better as you get rid of body fat. If you’ve been dieting and doing cardio to lose body fat and have hit a plateau you should try weight training. You’ll be glad you did.