Over
the years, weight training, also called resistance training,
has taken the spotlight away from cardiovascular exercise.
This is because weight
training is the best form of exercise
to lose body fat,
and spare your lean muscle mass.
Weight
training builds lean muscle mass, and the more muscle
mass that you have, the higher your metabolism. The
higher your metabolism, the more calories you are always
burning.
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WEIGHT TRAINING |
Weight
Training is an anaerobic exercise, meaning without oxygen.
Training
with weights puts your body under stress, and as a survival
mechanism, your body will adapt to that stress to make
you stronger. Over time, your body will gain more and
more lean muscle mass as a result of that weight training.
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Weight
Training & Metabolism
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Resistance
weight training builds more lean muscle tissue, which results in a higher metabolism
for 24 hours a day. Here’s how it does it.
Firstly,
while you
are doing
the resistance weight training,
your body is doing work and tearing down your lean muscle
tissue, which raises
your heart rate and your metabolism. (Believe me, when you train with the right amount of
weight, and take 30 seconds to 1-minute rests in between
each set, you will definitely feel your heart rate).
Secondly, after weight training, which tore down your muscle fibers,
your body rebuilds those muscles on your non-training
days and at rest. And
while your body is repairing those muscles, your body
is working harder, which raises your resting metabolic
rate.
Thirdly,
after your
muscle tissue has repaired and rebuilt itself, you
now have even more lean
muscle tissue. And we know that muscles are metabolically
active, meaning they generate more body heat and burn more calories
all of the time.
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Weight
Training Goal/Maximize Your Time & Metabolism
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The
goal is to knock out your weight training sessions, in
2– 3 short hours a week, to build more muscles, so
that your muscles will work at a high metabolic rate for
24hrs a day, 7 days a week. Sounds like a good exchange
to me.
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CARDIOVASCULAR
EXERCISE
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Cardiovascular
exercise is endurance training like long distance running,
bicycling, swimming etc. It is an aerobic exercise, meaning
with oxygen.
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Cardio
& Metabolism
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Cardiovascular
exercise burns calories mainly just while you are exercising.
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Most
people think that they are burning more body fat while
doing a cardiovascular exercise. But this is not true.
While
they are enduring that cardiovascular exercise, yes, they
are burning more calories than they would be if they were
doing nothing at all. But
their body is burning lean muscle tissue for fuel, not
body fat.
This
is another bodily survival mechanism. When your body is
under stress, it actually preserves your body fat for
the very last fuel supply, because remember, your body
knows that when body fat is gone, you are gone.
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These
are your body’s endurance fuel sources:
Glycogen 1st, lean muscle tissue 2nd, then body fat
3rd.
So,
for example, while you are running a mile:
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Your
body uses the glycogen (sugar stored in muscles)
to burn for energy, until it is depleted.
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Your body taps into and wastes your lean muscle
tissue to burn for energy.
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Then
your body starts burning body fat for energy.
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Skinny
Fat Person
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A
“skinny fat person” is a term used for
someone who looks skinny in clothes, but when their
body fat is measured, they have a high percentage of
body fat, and a small percentage of lean muscle mass.
As
a result, this person’s muscle mass and metabolism
are not working for them to burn more calories.
This
usually, is a person who does a lot of cardio, or eats
very little. This person has wasted their lean muscle
mass by doing all the cardio. They have also starved
and wasted their lean muscles mass, by not eating enough,
and by not feeding their muscles the protein they need.
This
person continuously has to eat less and less to maintain.
They do not have much lean muscle mass working for them,
to burn those calories.
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Runner
vs. Sprinter
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Being
that we now know that endurance cardiovascular training
is muscle wasting, let\'s look at another example to prove
it.
The
next time there is a big race on television, look at the
long distance runners, then look at the sprinters. Which
of the two are more muscular and well defined?
Not
the long distance runners because they are constantly
tearing down their muscles to use for energy, whereas,
the sprinters use explosive power, for a short period
of time, like that of weight training. Sprinting is not
an enduring exercise, so it is not muscle wasting. The
sprinters are only tearing down the muscles a little bit,
which makes building on their rest days, easier.
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Cardio
Wastes Your Time & Wastes Your Muscles
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Many
people start out, say on the stairmaster, and can only
do 5 minutes. Then, they work themselves up to say,
15 minutes. Then the next time, they get so excited
because they can now endure 20, 30, 45 minutes, and
so on.
What
is their goal? To stay on there for an hour, a day,
a week? What are they trying to accomplish?
Most
of us have very busy lives, and time is very valuable
to us. Why would we want to perform an exercise that
takes longer and longer to burn more and more calories?
Yes, again, they are burning calories while performing
or enduring that excruciating exercise, but at the same
time, wasting more and more muscle mass, while performing
that exercise. To
me, that is not only muscle wasting, but also time consuming
and time wasting!
And,
if those people doing all that cardio are not seeing
results, isn’t it time to get
off that hamster wheel!?
Isn’t
our goal to preserve lean muscle tissue, not to waste
it, so that we have a higher metabolism working for
us all of the time, not just while we are enduring that
exercise?
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