Strength Training Calories

I don't know "why" but I do know that you can put your strength training under the cardio and it gives you the calories.

No, not really. Cardio is definitely the best for burning calories, unless it's very intense lifting. However, strength training has a lot of benefits. It will help raise your metabolism so even at a resting rate you're burning more calories. I think to get the most benefit from weight training you should work it in between circuits of cardio, that way your heart rate is still up, thus burning more calories. Also, if you type in strength training in the cardio section it will give you some calories.

Here is what I found out about your questions and it explains it pretty well. This obviously from an article.

"You are probably burning more calories when you are actually moving a heavy weight than when you are doing aerobic exercise. But you are taking breaks, so over 30 minutes the actual number of calories burned doing strength training will be less."

Time factors into the contest another way, too: "You are limited in the amount of strength training you can do,"
The ACSM advises you weight-train no more than two to three times per week, to give the body time to repair microscopic muscle tears produced by training that are key to gaining strength. "But you can do cardiovascular exercise every day,"

"Ideally, you want a combination of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise and moderate-intensity strength training. But if vigorous aerobic exercise and vigorous weight training went head-to-head for calories burned, vigorous aerobic exercise would win."

As above, but to say they don't burn much would be wrong, it is all relative. I have never had such a low %BF as when I did a fairly intense 1 hour workout a day with weights. However without proper supervision and knowledge it is pretty hard to work to a level where you are achieving those results on your own.

What I would suggest goes against what most gym instructors tell you because it is what they are taught day one of a course, is do your weights BEFORE the Cardio.

Weightlifiing is anaerobic and therefore uses the glycogen in your muscles for energy. If you then follow your weights session with Cardio, there is no glycogen so the cardio starts tapping into fat reserves more quickly.

Make sure you refuel immediately after working out as well.

Also trying to increase muscle to increase metabolism is very ineffective. One pound of muscle burns 6 calories per day, not the 50 bandied around the internet. So even if you were able to gain 10 lbs of additional muscle fiber, a nearly unobtainable goal even when not trying to lose weight, it would only add 60 calories a day to your BMR. You will burn far far more calories from the workouts trying to gain the muscle and then to maintain it whether you gain 10 lbs or zero pounds.

Where on earth did you hear this? There are FAR too many studies out there that show the key to metabolism is muscle mass. It's a proven fact that your body burns far more calories to maintain muscle mass than it does to maintain fat mass. That's exactly why someone with a LOT of muscle has to eat like a horse if they want to maintain that muscle.

I agree completely with ShaneT99 on this one. I was an avid runner a few years ago but could never quite get to my goal weight. There were always a few extra pounds that I wish I could lose. I was diligent with my diet as well. It wasn't until I started doing more strength training that I was able to see some amazing results. Strength training has allowed me to look the best I have ever looked in years! I still do some cardio, but my workouts are more strength training now.

Sorry I misquoted, it is 7-10 calories a day.
http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=how_many_calories_does_muscle_really_burn_not_as_much_as_you_think

It is because you are counting it in the wrong column. Muscle takes 10 calories a day to maintain at rest (fat ~2 calories), i.e. BMR, so adding muscle to increase metabolism is almost pointless. However, exercise activities that move your body weight are proportional to weight so big, heavy, muscular guys burn more calories moving around and exercising. Also those big, muscular guys didn't get that way sitting in front of the TV. They are working out well over an hour a day and are burning lots of calories exercising. So they don't burn tons of calories simply because they have lots of muscle, they burn calories tons of calories trying to build or maintain their physique and moving a large amount of muscle mass hours a day. Simply the attempt to build a muscular body will burn far more calories than having one and sitting on you butt.

You sort of contradicted yourself. If muscle burns 10 calories per pound per day to maintain itself and someone has 150 pounds of muscle on their body (my LBM is about 180), then the muscle alone on that person's body burns 1500 calories a day doing absolutely NOTHING but sitting there and looking pretty. How often do your workouts burn 1500 calories? Contrast that to fat at 2 calories per day and 150 pounds of fat would burn only 300 calories. So, tell me which is better?

Certainly exercising is a good thing. No one here said it wasn't. Exercise aside though, it's a proven fact that a body with more muscle will burn more calories at rest than a body with less muscle. That's why strength training is important.

I am not sure but, I think, it is because it is a very complicated calculation with too many variables to generalize into a calculator. You can find some calculators online but I doubt they would even be in the ball park. Even an HRM measurement is unreliable even if under reported for strength training. The benefit of strength training is not while you are doing it anyway, it is all about the fitness and metabolism gains. Muscle burns calories in your sleep. Measure it with a tape measure and the scale. Last night I flipped a tire for about 15 minutes, the HRM gave me about 87 Calories burned, it was very hard work, I am sure it was worth more than 87 Calories. The benefit from that will come later. Keep it up your doing great. I did log it as strength training, so, I can measure progress with increased speed and reps.

You are correct, in that HR or HRM readings from strength training are useless. And the effects occur after the exercise session. And there are too many variables to generalize. I think the "muscle burns calories in your sleep" is a little overstated, but you are mostly on the right track.

As above, but to say they don't burn much would be wrong, it is all relative. I have never had such a low %BF as when I did a fairly intense 1 hour workout a day with weights. However without proper supervision and knowledge it is pretty hard to work to a level where you are achieving those results on your own.

What I would suggest goes against what most gym instructors tell you because it is what they are taught day one of a course, is do your weights BEFORE the Cardio.

Weightlifiing is anaerobic and therefore uses the glycogen in your muscles for energy. If you then follow your weights session with Cardio, there is no glycogen so the cardio starts tapping into fat reserves more quickly.

Make sure you refuel immediately after working out as well.

This just isn't true. You cannot lift enough in a typical session so that there is "no glycogen". And even if you could, two bad things would happen: 1) you couldn't do cardio for *kitten* (see: marathoners "hitting the wall") and 2) you would still need glucose for your brain and some other organs so your body would have to break down amino acids to scavenge the carbon skeletons.

Finally, the fuel substrate used during an exercise session has almost no long-term effect on stored body fat. In some cases, intense lifting can result in increased fat oxidation during a subsequent cardio workout, but, over 24 hrs, fat oxidation is no different from someone who followed a different workout pattern (the same holds true if you do a "fat burning" cardio workout). Things even out over time.

So maybe those "gym instructors" learned something on day one after all.

Sorry I misquoted, it is 7-10 calories a day.
http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=how_many_calories_does_muscle_really_burn_not_as_much_as_you_think

It is because you are counting it in the wrong column. Muscle takes 10 calories a day to maintain at rest (fat ~2 calories), i.e. BMR, so adding muscle to increase metabolism is almost pointless. However, exercise activities that move your body weight are proportional to weight so big, heavy, muscular guys burn more calories moving around and exercising. Also those big, muscular guys didn't get that way sitting in front of the TV. They are working out well over an hour a day and are burning lots of calories exercising. So they don't burn tons of calories simply because they have lots of muscle, they burn calories tons of calories trying to build or maintain their physique and moving a large amount of muscle mass hours a day. Simply the attempt to build a muscular body will burn far more calories than having one and sitting on you butt.

You sort of contradicted yourself. If muscle burns 10 calories per pound per day to maintain itself and someone has 150 pounds of muscle on their body (my LBM is about 180), then the muscle alone on that person's body burns 1500 calories a day doing absolutely NOTHING but sitting there and looking pretty. How often do your workouts burn 1500 calories? Contrast that to fat at 2 calories per day and 150 pounds of fat would burn only 300 calories. So, tell me which is better?

Certainly exercising is a good thing. No one here said it wasn't. Exercise aside though, it's a proven fact that a body with more muscle will burn more calories at rest than a body with less muscle. That's why strength training is important.

I think your logic is off. First of all, you are trying to directly compare 150 pounds of muscle on a human body with 150 pounds of fat and claim that proves a 1200 calorie per day difference in BMR. You can't make that simplistic a comparison, because that's not how bodies are made. You would have to compare someone who has 150lbs MORE muscle mass than another person. Since even a 5ft tall female is likely to have 70lbs of muscle, you are looking at a minimum of trying to use an example of someone with a muscle mass of at least 220 pounds, which after adding the rest of the body and a typical 20% fat amount, would be pushing 350-400 lbs--hardly a representative sample. Someone with 150 lbs of fat would be in the same category--allowing for a 50% level of body fat (which is still pretty unusual). So, you are using completely atypical body types for this comparison,body types for which there are few, if any, common reference points.

A more appropriate comparison or analysis would involve a net CHANGE in muscle mass. That is the point made by the earlier poster. He used an increase of 10lbs of muscle mass. For the average exerciser that is a substantial amount of muscle increase, and will most likely not be achieved, especially in individuals who are trying to lose weight. Again, you can see those types of increases (or larger) in competitive athletes, but that's not the typical person on this forum.

Technically, I would agree that an increase in muscle mass will lead to an increase in resting metabolism. However, from a practical standpoint, most people are not going to achieve enough of an increase to make a significant difference. Because of that, I do believe that the benefits of "muscle building" in the typical workout program are vastly overstated. When I see Jillian Michaels showing an exercise of someone waving around a 5 lb dumbbell in a movement that is horizontal (so there is no resistance) and yelling "we're building muscle so we can burn more fat", I think that is a much more typical example of how this concept is being misused, than the example of the 275 lb powerlifter.

It's also helpful to point out two other points: One, research by Westcott in the 1990s showed a significant improvement in fat loss of over time with a program that consisted of a combination of strength and cardio compared to strength-only and cardio-only routines. This benefit occurred even when there was no measurable increase in lean body mass. Two: the "metabolic type" workouts that are cited as being most effective for losing body fat often use relatively low-intensity weights--i.e. 40% of 1 RM max. They consist of high-intensity movements, but they are not "muscle-building" routines at all.

I like to focus on the practical applications of these principles. That's why I disagree with taking examples from the farther ends of the spectrum--be they Olympic powerlifters or Kenyan marathoners--and trying to generalize their results/experiences to the general population.

For weight loss, strength training is important because of the dynamic metabolic response to the training stimulus rather than a possible increase in muscle mass.

Technically, I would agree that an increase in muscle mass will lead to an increase in resting metabolism. However, from a practical standpoint, most people are not going to achieve enough of an increase to make a significant difference. Because of that, I do believe that the benefits of "muscle building" in the typical workout program are vastly overstated. When I see Jillian Michaels showing an exercise of someone waving around a 5 lb dumbbell in a movement that is horizontal (so there is no resistance) and yelling "we're building muscle so we can burn more fat", I think that is a much more typical example of how this concept is being misused, than the example of the 275 lb powerlifter.

For weight loss, strength training is important because of the dynamic metabolic response to the training stimulus rather than a possible increase in muscle mass.

I would suggest from experience that the benefit of weightlifting while losing weight is for the most part not about building muscle at all, but helping retain it. The more muscle lost during weight loss, the more total weight a person has to lose in order to get to a given body fat percentage. Though I do agree that it is overstated for individuals with a high body fat percentage, I have to say that as a persons body fat percentage gets lower, weightlifting becomes more beneficial and at some point anaerobic exercise is a must for reducing bf%.

Technically, I would agree that an increase in muscle mass will lead to an increase in resting metabolism. However, from a practical standpoint, most people are not going to achieve enough of an increase to make a significant difference. Because of that, I do believe that the benefits of "muscle building" in the typical workout program are vastly overstated. When I see Jillian Michaels showing an exercise of someone waving around a 5 lb dumbbell in a movement that is horizontal (so there is no resistance) and yelling "we're building muscle so we can burn more fat", I think that is a much more typical example of how this concept is being misused, than the example of the 275 lb powerlifter.

For weight loss, strength training is important because of the dynamic metabolic response to the training stimulus rather than a possible increase in muscle mass.

I would suggest from experience that the benefit of weightlifting while losing weight is for the most part not about building muscle at all, but helping retain it. The more muscle lost during weight loss, the more total weight a person has to lose in order to get to a given body fat percentage. Though I do agree that it is overstated for individuals with a high body fat percentage, I have to say that as a persons body fat percentage gets lower, weightlifting becomes more beneficial and at some point anaerobic exercise is a must for reducing bf%.

Good point as well. Hopefully as the discussion looks at some of the more arcane aspects, the primary idea is not lost--that resistance training is essential for both the short and long term success of any weight loss program.

I also also agree with the last sentence--the body's response to "diet" and exercise changes substantially as one gets closer to an ideal level of body fat and it takes a different approach to continue seeing results.

Sorry I misquoted, it is 7-10 calories a day.
http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=how_many_calories_does_muscle_really_burn_not_as_much_as_you_think

It is because you are counting it in the wrong column. Muscle takes 10 calories a day to maintain at rest (fat ~2 calories), i.e. BMR, so adding muscle to increase metabolism is almost pointless. However, exercise activities that move your body weight are proportional to weight so big, heavy, muscular guys burn more calories moving around and exercising. Also those big, muscular guys didn't get that way sitting in front of the TV. They are working out well over an hour a day and are burning lots of calories exercising. So they don't burn tons of calories simply because they have lots of muscle, they burn calories tons of calories trying to build or maintain their physique and moving a large amount of muscle mass hours a day. Simply the attempt to build a muscular body will burn far more calories than having one and sitting on you butt.

You sort of contradicted yourself. If muscle burns 10 calories per pound per day to maintain itself and someone has 150 pounds of muscle on their body (my LBM is about 180), then the muscle alone on that person's body burns 1500 calories a day doing absolutely NOTHING but sitting there and looking pretty. How often do your workouts burn 1500 calories? Contrast that to fat at 2 calories per day and 150 pounds of fat would burn only 300 calories. So, tell me which is better?

Certainly exercising is a good thing. No one here said it wasn't. Exercise aside though, it's a proven fact that a body with more muscle will burn more calories at rest than a body with less muscle. That's why strength training is important.

I did not contradict myself as Azdak pointed out. Your logic is completely flawed. Let's take a real world example.

Two people both weight 150lbs. One does cardio and the other strength training so the strength training guy has 10lbs more muscle than cardio guy, who has 10lbs more fat.

Strength guy's BMR is (8.5 calories muscle/extra pound - 2 calories fat/extra pound) * 10 extra pounds = 65 calories net per day over cardio guy. So if you work out for a year strength training, burning probably on the order of 250 calories per day * 365 days = 91250 calories, you could get an extra 60 calories a day. As I said, the act of trying to put on the muscle and maintain it burns far more calories than having it. Also you could get the extra 65 calories from walking about 10-15 minutes, like say always parking far away from the store.

The other is what is the point of having massive caloric needs? Just to make your friends jealous you can eat an entire pizza and not gain weight? Strength training makes sense for body composition and strength but doing it just to try to raise your BMR seems useless because the higher your daily caloric needs, the more you will automatically eat because your body knows how much it needs to maintain weight. If you want great strength and body composition, do strength training and some cardio. If you simply want to be able to eat massive amounts of food then take up long distance running.

I did not contradict myself as Azdak pointed out. Your logic is completely flawed. Let's take a real world example.

Two people both weight 150lbs. One does cardio and the other strength training so the strength training guy has 10lbs more muscle than cardio guy, who has 10lbs more fat.

Strength guy's BMR is (8.5 calories muscle/extra pound - 2 calories fat/extra pound) * 10 extra pounds = 65 calories net per day over cardio guy. So if you work out for a year strength training, burning probably on the order of 250 calories per day * 365 days = 91250 calories, you could get an extra 60 calories a day. As I said, the act of trying to put on the muscle and maintain it burns far more calories than having it. Also you could get the extra 65 calories from walking about 10-15 minutes, like say always parking far away from the store.

The other is what is the point of having massive caloric needs? Just to make your friends jealous you can eat an entire pizza and not gain weight? Strength training makes sense for body composition and strength but doing it just to try to raise your BMR seems useless because the higher your daily caloric needs, the more you will automatically eat because your body knows how much it needs to maintain weight. If you want great strength and body composition, do strength training and some cardio. If you simply want to be able to eat massive amounts of food then take up long distance running.

You're completely missing my point, so let me make this very simple for you and then I'll leave it alone.

Muscle is better than fat. Period.

I don't understand why strength training and cardio have to be mutually exclusive. I honeslty like long distance running. I honestly like hitting the weights and other ST excersises pretty hard. I'm fine with the fact that if the body has to choose between muscle mass and endurance it's going to choose endurance.

The best results I have seen as far as fat (notice I said fat, I've actually gained a few pounds doing this) loss, and inches off my waist is when I do 3 days ST, 2 days long distance running, and 1 day HIIT over a long distance.

But I have seen an increase in stregnth (notice I said strength, not muscle), while also experiencing an increase in endurance.

In the end, unless you're training for a specific athletic event or are a proffessional athlete, it doesn't matter. Just move. Don't just sit there, Do SOMETHING!