Resistance Training for faster fat-loss

If burning off some unwanted body-fat is a priority to you or you have lost some weight, but you want to get rid of that final bit from round your stomach and legs, then its time to start working those muscles with some resistance whether it’s using your body weight, dumbbells/barbells, suspension training, Kettlebells, sandbags or anything else.

Why should you use resistance training instead of just aerobic training, because contrary to popular belief getting on those CV machines like the treadmill or cross trainer for 40 minutes and getting off dripping with sweat, is not best, fastest or lets be honest, most exciting way to lose weight.

The truth is you need to work your muscles and don’t worry if you’re a girl, it doesn’t mean you’ll get big muscles like the men in your gym because of your different hormone balance you don’t produce as much testosterone, which is the primary hormone needed for muscle growth, hence why it is in steroids, instead you will just end up with a slim toned figure.

Now you’re probably thinking why would doing weigh training, swinging a kettlebell or any other training working my muscles make me lose more weight than running, cycling,  using the cross trainer or any other type of CV for that matter. You might find you don’t even sweat much doing weights, but here’s the big secret; it’s not about how many calories you burn in the gym, its how many you burn out of it!!

It might sound extreme, but this is the truth unfortunately, think about it, at best most of us will exercise 3 to 5 hours a week, some people might get up to 10 or even 20 hours, but that still isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of thinks when you realise there are  168 hour week. And Obviously we can’t exercise for 168 hours every week, you need at around 56 hours of sleep in that week, so now you are down to 112 hours, then a 40 hour work week, now we are looking at 72 hours and if you don’t want to exercise on the weekend, then we need to take off another 32 hours. So now you are left with 40 hours and I’m sure you don’t want to spend all those hours exercising.

It looks like unless you are extremely committed you won’t be doing more than 5 hours exercise a week and for most of us that’s a long shot, but you can still manage to get the benefits of over 100 hours exercise a week because after doing exercise such as lifting weights or doing some kettlebell training, your muscles need to repair and regenerate, this takes energy and time, which can speed up metabolism for up to 48 hours, that basically means after weight training or body weight exercise of between 30-60 minutes your body could be burning fat for up to 48 hours after, sounds pretty good to eh.

For the best results you should be aiming to do compound movements (this means exercises that work multiple joints and muscles at one time) like squats, lunges, pulling movements, like rows and pull ups, kettlebell swings and snatches, dips and pressing movements because the more muscles you work at once, the more calories you can burn..

So there you have it, if you really want to lose weight fast and tone you’re muscles at the same time, either start doing some body weight exercises such as lunges and squats or grab some dumbbells/Kettlebells and turn yourself into a 24 hour fat burning machine.