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Aerobic Exercises Burn off Fat and Weightlifting Builds Muscle?

October 25, 2007

Burning Fat

Generally, many people will do cardio exercises and forget all about weight training exercises when it comes to burning fat. A lot of trainers swear that aerobic exercises burn off fat and weightlifting is only used to build muscle. This isn’t entirely correct, however, because the more muscle mass one builds, the more one will burn fat calories, even at rest. There is a growing trend from cardiovascular to weight training exercises.

According to a study by the Fitness Products Council and Sporting Goods Manufacturers, the number of people lifting free weights has increased 76 percent in the past decade. Currently, weightlifting is among the most popular sports in North America. This change is for the best because cardiovascular activity combined with weight training will result in much more effective fat loss. Cardiovascular exercises will raise muscle metabolism during the activity and for a short time after the exercise session.

On the other hand, weight lifting exercises, will raise your muscle metabolism during the exercise session, and for a long time after the exercise session. Some high intensity trainers have even seen their metabolism rise for several days following their training session. Performing adequate weight training exercises should limit your repetitions anywhere from 1 to 20, in general. This kind of resistance on muscles will make their tissue leaner and stronger. The muscle development will take place during the rest period following the resistance training. This is why sufficient rest periods are essential.

Whether your goal is to tone up or build muscle, it is important to know what happens during the muscle training process. When lifting weights, muscle tissues are torn apart (at the cellular level) from the stress, and it’s in the recuperation period that your muscles become stronger and therefore able to support the extra stress. Usually the recuperation period required is 24 to 48 hours after the weight lifting activity.

During the recuperation period, the muscle metabolism is still burning energy, and that’s when it’s time to perform cardiovascular activities. Carrying out high repetitions of the same movement will tire the body on a different basis. Combining low repetition exercises (weight lifting) with high repetition cardiovascular exercise will stress muscles in a complementary way to increase the total fat burning effect.

Anybody who debates the fact that weight bearing exercises don’t help people lose weight and fat should lift weights for an hour and see their heart rate go through the roof. One only needs to look at athletes who specialize in short, intense bursts of energy and you still see that they are very low in body fat.

The point is to combine a weightlifting routine with a good cardio workout to increase muscle metabolism and total fat burning efficiency.

It’s important to remember that when trying to lose weight, lots of muscle mass can be lost in the process. With muscle mass keeping your metabolism high, you should try to avoid quick weight loss through fad diets or starvation. This weight loss will be regained just as fast. Instead, go for a gradual fat loss routine by combining weight training and cardiovascular activities, while allowing muscle mass to build up and increase your metabolism. It will take longer to get results but they will also last a lot longer.

Tagged: Weight Training

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Written by Supertraining · Filed Under Aerobic Training, Weight Training

Comments

One Response to “Aerobic Exercises Burn off Fat and Weightlifting Builds Muscle?”

Angelica on November 13th, 2007 11:02 am

If you are that obsesssed with your body there is truly something wrong with you people. Get off the steroids. =] have a nice day.

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