To burn or not to burn....workout advice please

Check out Covert Bailey's "Fit of Fat", it's available used on Amazon for pretty cheap. He speaks to Frequency + Intensity + Time in terms of how to effectively burn those calories without hurting yourself.

BTW - one of the most overlooked pieces of exercise equipment is a rower - it's a high fat burner, low impact and very easy on the joints, especially the knees. You want to have a high (in the zone) heart rate for the duration of the exercise.

He also explains the difference between "aerobic" and "anaerobic" exercise (and has an opinion on which is better) for fat burning / weight loss.

Most of our cells prefer to get their energy by using oxygen to fuel metabolism. During exercise with adequate fuel and oxygen (i.e., aerobic), muscle cells can contract repeatedly without fatigue.

Aerobic exercise conditions enable you to exercise for long periods of time, potentially benefiting from the sustained energy expenditure (i.e., calories burned). Aerobic exercise tends to be less stressful to muscles, joints, and your heart, which may be important for individuals with arthritis, heart disease, or high blood pressure. However, to more rapidly improve your exercise capacities, tolerance, and performance, some anaerobic exercise training is a necessity.

During anaerobic or non-oxygen conditions (i.e., higher intensity exercise), muscle cells must rely on other reactions that do not require oxygen to fuel muscle contraction. This anaerobic metabolism in the cells produces waste molecules that can impair muscle contractions. We call this deterioration in performance fatigue.

Fatigue causes you to experience added discomfort and weakening muscles. Eventually you will need to slow down and lower your exercise intensity. Slowing down allows the muscles to once again rely solely on aerobic metabolism and support the removal or chemical conversion of waste molecules.

The more intensely you exercise, the greater the need for anaerobic energy production. When this happens, we refer to this change in metabolism as a metabolic threshold. This metabolic threshold represents the exercise intensity where we start to produce those waste products of anaerobic metabolism that can eventually lead to fatigue.

Lifting weights is anaerobic. That is why muscles fatigue so rapidly with this type of training. The danger is in doing reps / weight beyond your level of performance due to fatigue - 1. It tweaks your adrenals and raises your cortisol levels and actually works against weight loss and 2. It puts you at risk for serious injury.

Don't try to turn weights into cardio - you already have the cardio base covered.

Agree with more structure - either get a good PT to design a program for your needs or pick an existing one rather than blunder through making one up yourself.
That way you will use your time far more efficiently, progress faster and get better results.

Someone more in the know than me can chime in, but 12 reps sounds like cardio range. I have done starting strength/stronglifts in the past and found it much more efficient. They are structured programs using free weights/bar and have higher weight, lower rep.

You said your main goal is weight loss. That will come from eating at a calorie deficit. The cardio will give you more calories to play with each day. The strength training will help retain your muscles so that a larger percentage of fat is lost. In weight loss, you'll lose fat, muscle, tissue, etc.

I know you were asking about reps for weights, but really look at what @Sunna_W said. If you have anywhere around you where you can get an AMA (active metabolic assessment) done, I highly recommend doing so. In that assessment, they will measure how effectively your body is using oxygen, and will break down your different heart rate zones. They will also tell you what your personal metabolic threshold is.

When we burn calories, we burn both fat and carbohydrates. When you start to exercise in the anerobic zones, while you are technically burning more calories, you are burning little to no fat. It's around zone two where our bodies are burning the greatest percentage of our calories from fat. Knowing your zones allows you to set target heart rates for your workouts based on the goals you want to achieve.

Good luck!

mtbusse73 wrote: »

OK...I'm new to the GYM Life. I got a membership to the local PlanetFitness. My main goal is WEIGHT LOSS. Here's my routine and have been doing this for about 3 months. I'm a big guy - 5'9" 273.8# (I just weighed).

1. Either stationary bike for 20-30 minutes at a high enough rate that I'm out of breath or Elliptical for 15 minutes (which to me is definitely harder).

2. Weight machines for 20-40 minutes at a high enough pace where it keeps me slightly winded as well but not like where I can't talk (does that make sense?). Normally one day I will work on my legs and the next day arms and abs.

One other point: I don't know what order you're doing this in, but I'm going to guess you're on the cardio first since you wrote it first.

If you're going to lift, lift first, then cardio. Reason being you want the glycogen in your muscles as energy to fuel your lifting. As you lift you will reduce these glycogen stores. In order to get the best strength training in on your muscle groups, lift while you have a full supply of glycogen.

mtbusse73 wrote: »

Do you think regarding the 8-12 reps should I be trying to lift the MOST that I can in those 8-12 reps or a more comfortable weight?

The real question is: how many sets are you doing, total? How long is your workout? How much volume are you doing? What types of exercises are you doing? Beginners often make the mistake of doing a bunch of isolation lifts when what they really need to work on is the compound lifts to build strength and muscle.

Typically, if I'm lifting in the 8-12 rep range, I'm doing 3-4 sets on a particular lift. I'm trying to get a certain amount of volume on each muscle group that I'm working that day. James Fell wrote a great article about hypertrophy a little while ago: http://www.bodyforwife.com/gaining-muscle-mass-the-hierarchy-of-hypertrophy/

So, for example, bench press (compound lift, works multiple muscle groups), if I'm doing 8 reps then I'm doing four sets because it's a bigger lift that works a lot of muscles at the same time. If I'm doing tricep cable pulldowns, an isolation exercise, I may lift 12 reps and do three sets.

So to answer your question: what I want for those three or four sets is to be able to complete them, but on the last reps of the last set they should be really, really hard for me to complete and I may fail.

One last thing: this is why people recommend programs like Strong Lifts and Starting Strength, because they really focus on the compound lifts. Things like bench press, deadlift, squats, overhead press, barbell rows. These lifts work multiple muscle groups at the same time. So instead of having to do a whole bunch of different lifts and spend a ton of time in the gym, you can do a few lifts, in a short amount of time, and target all the major muscle groups. It's a great way to start out and build strength and muscle.