Strength training question...please help

madameyounger
madameyounger Posts: 3 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Is it true that strength training is really the key to burning more calories efficiently? Can anyone validate this theory with success? I feel like I have been running in circles and getting nowhere with cardio so I am thinking of changing the way I've been doing things. Also, is it true you need a rest/recovery day in between those training days? I's hard for me to wrap my brain around that after doing cardio every day for the last XX amount of years. Any help is appreciated! Thanks...

Replies

  • Joneses17
    Joneses17 Posts: 135 Member
    I believe this to be true for my body at least. In the past I have taken strength training courses in college and did heavy weight lifting 3-4 days a week with very little cardio (not much more than a 5 min run warm up) and lost inches very quickly. I am currently doing more cardio than strength because I want to get back into running aike I did when I played soccer but as I build my strength and routine back to what it once was I def will give strength the same amount of time as cardio.

    Strength tones your muscles so your body is more tone and sculpted. I have seen results faster and dropped sizes and didn't worry about the scale. Muscle also burns more calories at rest than fat so a muscular person will, in theory, burn more calories at rest than someone with a higher percentage of body fat and less muscle.
  • dlwyatt82
    dlwyatt82 Posts: 1,077 Member
    Strength training is a great thing, but the claim that it causes your body to burn more calories is really overstated. Yes, pound for pound, it takes the body more calories to maintain muscle than fat, but you would have to eat enough to gain weight to put on pounds of muscle in the first place. Strength training while losing weight helps you at least maintain most of the muscle you already have, rather than losing a lot of your lean mass along with the fat.

    Whether you need a rest day depends on how you structure your workouts, and how intense they are. For heavy lifting, you shouldn't exercise the same muscle group two days in a row, as it does take your body a while to recover.

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