Resistance or strength training is governed by exercises that use a weight or other form of resistance to cause the muscles to contract. As a result, the muscles become stronger and grow, your body becomes toned, and you burn more fat because of more muscle mass. With an increased composition of muscle, your body will burn more calories, because the caloric requirement of muscle is far greater than that of fat. Thus, weight training can be a great addition to your quick weight loss program.
What benefits do you get from weight training? To begin with, it adds lean muscle mass, increases bone density, and helps reduce your blood pressure. We can compare this to the benefits of cardiovascular exercise. Cardiovascular exercise builds a strong heart and lungs, increases the number of red blood cells in your body, and improves circulation.
In combination with a health diet, both of these types of exercise are important. Each week include all three elements in your overall weight loss and fat burning program. By incorporating both of these forms of exercise into your regimen and eating a healthy diet, you will be well on your way to achieving rapid weight loss.
To derive the full benefit of weight training, you should engage in a routine that exercises all the major muscle groups in your body. A good routine to start off with would be to pick two exercises for each muscle group, and do two sets of ten repetitions for each exercise.
If you can warm up for ten minutes prior to starting your resistance training. Aerobics or yoga stretches are good ways to warm up. In addition, confer with your medical practitioner prior to commencing with a resistance training regimen.
What follows are some exercises designed to hit all the major muscle groups.
To exercise your chest or pectoral muscles, do push ups and flat or inclined bench presses.
To strengthen your back do dumbbell rows and lat pull downs.
To exercise your shoulders, do overhead dumbbell presses and seated barbell presses. For your biceps, you can do curls with a barbell and concentration curls with dumbbells. To exercise your triceps, you can do reverse extensions with dumbbells and barbell presses with your hands gripping the bar close together. To strengthen your legs and buttocks you can do lunges and squats. Lastly, for your abdomen do sit ups and crunches.
Rest at least one day between workouts. On the days in between resistance training you can do some aerobics. While weight training it is important that you utilize proper form. If it is feasible have a friend or trainer watch you and correct any problems that arise with the form you are using. Over time, you will progress, and then you can gradually increase the amount of weight you use. After you reach fifteen repetitions, you may want to increase the amount of weight you use. After you can do about fifteen repetitions comfortably, increase the amount of weight you use.
Follow this routine for about six weeks, and then find another routine, using different exercises. Try not to rest for more than one minute between sets, this will help you burn fat.
That should get you started on the right path to increased body strength, body tone, and fat loss.
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