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Can You Burn Body Fat With Weights?

By Russ Howe


If you have ever asked someone to explain how to burn body fat, the chances are slim that weight training came up in the list of responses.

Yet despite this widespread misconception, weight training remains highly effective for burning body fat.

In fact, resistance training has been clinically proven across many scientific research studies to be highly effective for burning body fat - even more than cardiovascular exercise!

While there are many forms of weight based training, the specific form you should be looking at for burning body fat is known as H.I.R.T.

Before you go to the gym with ideas of lifting light weights for millions of reps in a Body Pump class, it's important to understand that high intensity resistance training does not involve going light at all. In fact, it's one of the most difficult weight lifting protocols in existence today. But that also makes it one of the most effective.

The muscle building process which is kick-started following a weights workout is known as hypertrophy. The key factor here is that a session based around hypertrophy will use carbohydrates as it's main fuel during the workout. Not fat.

Do not let that fact fool you.

The hypertrophy which is caused by our weight training session uses carbohydrates to fuel our muscles while we train. However, the moment we end our workout the body switches to burning body fat and this remains the case for a considerable number of hours thereafter. That's right, we are burning body fat after the gym, not in the gym!

By training so hard we use carbs as our primary fuel in the gym, we allow ourselves the luxury of using fat as our primary fuel for up to sixteen hours after we finish training! That's considerably more fat than we could burn if we stayed at a low intensity and used it as our primary fuel source while training.

So how would somebody go about using this training protocol?



The reason most people believe weight lifting is purely for bodybuilding purposes is because most people follow a bodybuilding routine without realizing it. Take a look the next time you train. How many people are lifting a weight for eight to twelve reps? How many are sitting for one-to-two minutes resting after each set? The answer is too many. That's normal gym procedure for the masses.

If you are aiming for high intensity resistance training, however, that is not what you should be doing.

High intensity resistance training involves reducing rest periods but keeping your training hard and heavy. Pair compound lifts together and work through sets of three of four moves in one circuit. You'll get more done in your session than those taking vast rest periods after every set, and you will notice significantly greater fat loss results in the weeks which follow.

There are now numerous scientific studies which confirm the effectiveness of resistance training for fat loss. In fact, many even suggest it to be greater than cardio. If you train in a mainstream gym then there's a good chance you may never have stumbled across this information before. Use it wisely.




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