How Much Strength Training should I do? Please help?

mariejoy1995

Hello,
I am on a journey to lose 50 Kilos. I have since January lost 11Kilos so have about 39 Kilos to lose.
I had only been doing Cardio (Walking, Running, Elliptical, Rowing Machine and Stationary Bike). I do 45 to 1 hour and a half of cardio per day. I do 40 Minutes of Yoga/Pilates Blend every second day.

I know you should do strength training to help lose weight too but I'm curious to know how much. I was planning on doing it 3 times a week, circuit. Doing Cardio everyday also.

I am silly but I am afraid of getting bulky so how many reps and sets on each machine should I do?
Also will this halt my weight loss?

Rose6300

It sounds like you're off to a good start! Congrats on your success so far.

When you have that much to lose, you might want to start with this type of regime from Lyle McDonald, from this page: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/training-the-obese-beginner-part-3.html

Weight training is one of the best and fastest ways to deplete muscle glycogen and start getting fat burning pathways running again. Generally a focus on higher repetitions (more accurately sets lasting about 45-60 seconds) is the goal here. So you’re looking at 12-15 reps on a slow tempo or 15-20 with a faster tempo. In that range.
Multiple sets would be ideal (to fully deplete the body quickly takes about 12+ sets per muscle group) although it would be a massive mistake to try to do this out of the gate with a beginner unless you never want them to come back to the gym. Start with a low volume, increasing gradually over the first few weeks of the exercise program and this will get the job done. It will take a bit longer but this isn’t a race.
You don’t even need a ton of exercises, pick compound movements like leg press, chest press and rowing or pulldowns and you’ve got most of the body. A routine centered around 3-4 sets of 12-15/15-20 repetitions might take as little as 30 minutes. I’ll talk in much more detail about specific exercise routines later in the series.

He get's into the science of it some more here: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/categories-of-weight-training-part-1.html

Metabolic/Depletion Training
Metabolic or depletion training generally describes any type of training built around relatively higher reps (typically 15-20 or sometimes higher, with sets typically lasting perhaps 45-60 seconds) and short rest periods (typically 30-60 seconds). As you’d expect, the loads used are generally relatively low in terms of percentage of 1 repetition maximum (60% or often less). As far as total sets, typically 3-4 sets of any given exercise are done, depending on the goal (e.g. in The Ultimate Diet 2.0, a total of 10-12 sets per body part is needed to deplete muscle glycogen).
So for any given exercise, 4 sets of 15-20 reps with 60″ (1 minute) rest might be done. Alternately, two different exercises might be alternated with a very short rest period with a slightly longer rest interval between each exercise pairing. So you might move from exercise 1 to exercise 2 with only 15-30 seconds rest and then rest 90 seconds after exercise two before returning to the next pairing. This tends to make the workout harder in general while still allowing sufficient recovery between similar exercises. This might be done for 3-4 exercise pairings or whatever. So a total of 6-8 exercises per workout for 4 sets apiece might be a typical workout.

Best of luck to you. And I'll just leave this article here because I just found it and I find it inspiring: http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2014/04/03/lost-in-a-labyrinth-getting-healthy-isnt-a-straight-shot/

CipherZero

I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. He outlines a decent beginning program that will build your strength base quickly and with good form lifts that will reduce your chance of injury.