Why bother with stregth training

FearlessRobb

You enter it in but it doesnt affect calories and doesnt tell u anything but what u did. Adding in cardio shows calories burned why doesnt stregth????????

ixap

You can enter it in cardio as strength training and it'll give you calories.
The strength training area below is more to log your lifts (number of pounds, reps, etc.)

AmberFaith90

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

zaph0d

Strength training makes your body stronger.

JesterMFP

I think it's because it's really hard to estimate how many calories someone burns through strength training - there are so many variables. But yeah, you can enter it as cardio for a rough estimate. Also, there are many advantages to strength training regardless of calorie burn.

JesterMFP

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

HRMs aren't really very accurate for that type of exercise, they're really best for steady-state cardio.

_stephanie0

i second the HRM comment. plus the MFP cals are usually wayyy off. they can say in 20min on treadmill i'll burn x amount of calories, when in reality is half of that.

also, when i strength train i burn about 400 calories per hour...so yeah, strength train.

plus muscle is sexy AND burns more cals per day than fat, why wouldnt you want to strength train haha

geebusuk

It's hard to work out how many calories strength training will actually burn - as it keeps 'burning' for over 24 hours after I believe, even though at the time you won't have burnt that many.

Why do it - look in the mirror after a couple of months and lower fat/more tone is the incentive.

LorinaLynn

There's a strength training entry in the cardio section. It's just a ballpark, but it gives me about 89 calories per half hour.

mmapags

Well there are various reasons. One is that, ideally, you want to lose primarily fat and maintain as much lean muscle tissue as possible. This is very difficult without strength training whlie in calorie deficit and lean muscle tissue will be lost. This is why sometimes people diet and do cardio and reduce their overall weight but don't drop thier body fat % as much.

Another is that, while strength training doesn't burn a ton of calories while doing it, it has the highest "afterburn" or EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). This gives you an increased metabolism for a period of time after exercise where you continue to burn calories at a higher level.

For these reasons, the ideal strategy for getting healthier and leaner is a combo of calorie deficit, strength training and cardio in that order of priority.

JLand918

i second the HRM comment. plus the MFP cals are usually wayyy off. they can say in 20min on treadmill i'll burn x amount of calories, when in reality is half of that.

also, when i strength train i burn about 400 calories per hour...so yeah, strength train.

plus muscle is sexy AND burns more cals per day than fat, why wouldnt you want to strength train haha

I agree with the cals being way off the actual 10 min on a treadmill at 2.5 walking pace burns about 50cal but on MFP it says like 200cal.

mmapags

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

HRMs are designed for cardio and fairly useless for strength training.

kingscrown

I have a HR monitor and I just enter the whole time and the calories burned in a cardio. I'm not going to bother adding in the reps and things. What a pain and a bore.

ixap

Well there are various reasons. One is that, ideally, you want to lose primarily fat and maintain as much lean muscle tissue as possible. This is very difficult without strength training whlie in calorie deficit and lean muscle tissue will be lost. This is why sometimes people diet and do cardio and reduce their overall weight but don't drop thier body fat % as much.

Another is that, while strength training doesn't burn a ton of calories while doing it, it has the highest "afterburn" or EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). This gives you an increased metabolism for a period of time after exercise where you continue to burn calories at a higher level.

For these reasons, the ideal strategy for getting healthier and leaner is a combo of calorie deficit, strength training and cardio in that order of priority.

Agree w/ all this.
I kind of thought he was asking "why bother logging it" not "why bother doing it", but if so, big YES to this.

JonMB

I kind of thought he was asking "why bother logging it"

I'm pretty sure that's what he was asking, yeah. MFP is more about tracking food and cardio than tracking weights, but they give you the option to.

FearlessRobb

I kind of thought he was asking "why bother logging it"

I'm pretty sure that's what he was asking, yeah. MFP is more about tracking food and cardio than tracking weights, but they give you the option to.

Yes my main thing is why bother logging it lol

slkehl

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

HRMs are designed for cardio and fairly useless for strength training.

This.

Also, while strength training might not burn many calories while you're doing it, it will help you burn more calories when you're just sitting around. This is because you'll have more lean body mass, which is more metabolically active than fat. Thus, your calories burned at rest will be higher than if you did no strength training.

Case in point: a man can eat more calories than a woman, all other factors equal (height, weight, ect.). Why? Because men naturally have more lean body mass than women.

DavPul

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

sigh.......I've already gotten by once weekly rant about HRMs out so I'll leave this alone.

Pretty sure he means that logging it in MFP is a waste of time. And yep, pretty much it is. Don't log exercises, sets or reps. Hell, don't ever touch the Strength Training tab. It's a waste of time. You can, if you wish, log strength training as an exercise under cardio. It'll give you a meaningless calorie burn number, but mostly it will be a way to track what you did on each day in broad strokes.

If you do want an app to track your strength training progress, I strongly recommend Jefit. Big improvement over my pad and pencil days.

jofjltncb6

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

HRMs are designed for cardio and fairly useless for strength training.

Lies! HRMs are at least 99.44% accurate for everything. Always.

robin52077

This is where a Heart Rate Monitor comes in handy.

HRMs are designed for cardio and fairly useless for strength training.

Lies! HRMs are at least 99.44% accurate for everything. Always.

I thought it was 99.42?
Anyway, I wear mine while sleeping and eat back my sleep calories....

booyainyoface

strength training will make you look good naked...

just doing cardio will make you a smaller, mushy, same shaped person...