Weight Training As An Aerobic Exercise – you betcha!
Weight loss is a complicated issue. One of the greatest conundrums of weight loss is that the more exercise you do the more efficient your body gets a burning calories. So the 5 miles that you ran at the beginning may have burned 1000 calories – but 5 months later it may only burn 750 calories for the same exercise.
Now you can speed things up, increase the incline etc. Anything to increase the intensity, but the fact of the matter is your body will adapt. So if you are not constantly varying your exercise regime you will hit a plateau.
You actually need a combination of several different exercises in order to have an effective workout regime. I’m just going to outline the different parts here.
1) HIT (High Intensity Training): Wind sprints are great for booting the metabolism. Does not burn as many calories, but it will increase your overall metabolic rate throughout the day.
2) Endurance (heart rate around 70-80% maximum target heart rate – 220-Age = Max Target Heart Rate): Get that heart rate up high high high for as long as you can go up to about 40 minutes. The main point here is that you will burn more calories over all.
Be careful on these first 2. If you have not exercised in awhile you will want to talk to a doctor before engaging in these really seriously intense exercises.
3) Low intensity (Heart rate in the 60-70% of max range)- This is great for over all fat burning power. The longer you go (1-2 hours here) the more and more of the calories will come directly from your fat stores. Which is a really good things
4) Weight Training – This will add muscle which requires energy just to exist, let alone move. So as your body becomes more efficient if your are adding muscle you will burn more energy anyway, even if your body is more efficient at burning the calories over all.
Here is what I like to do.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday: Long upper end of the “low intestisty” exercises. This is where I will run while watching a movie. I will keep my heart rate up as high as I can for as long as I can. So typically I will get in about 40-60 minutes of Endurance style training. And then I will keep going at a slower pace for the 2 hour movie to get over.
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I will do weight lifting and HIT excercises.
It does not always work out that way. Sometimes I have to cut my MWF regime to just the endurance category. But as often as possible I try to get in 2 hours at a time.
Weight lifting I sometimes have to do throughout the day. I will take a break from programming to do push-ups or sit-ups or curls etc.
For me the point is to move more, eat less, and replenish the nutrients in my body. It seems to work very well for me
Be Health – Enjoy Life!
Matthew Stearmer
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Comments
Hi Amber,
I always appreciate your posts. Thanks.
You might want to look at this post
http://stearmer.com/blog/2008/10/02/where-has-a...
And my full length article here.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Weight-Loss-Yo-Yo-Eff...
Both of these outline the same basic principle that it is not until after
you've continued your aerobic exercise past 20 minutes you will not be
burning fat directly. After 20 minutes your body will start to burn more and
more calories from the fat stores. As you approach 4 hours 95% come from
fat.
Now, I have only rarely gone for 4 hours at a time. Very rarely. But I
consistently workout in the 2 hour range because upwards of 60% of the
calories are now coming directly from the fat.
45 minutes is a great time. It will certainly make you very very health. You
are already is great shape so that will be more than adequate. But for those
of us who really want to take things into higher gear knowing how the body
works with the switch from glycogen to direct fat burning can use that to
our advantage and make some extra progress.
So keep up the good work and for those who need to boost their fat burning
requirements considering adding 2-3 longer workouts each week. Just put on a
movie and go.
Thanks again for the comments!
Matthew Stearmer
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Good Suggestion!!! Will definitely try the techniques. All the points seems to be logical and I will come back here after I get the final results. Thanks
Thank you. Although I do not excercise as much as you do I see the need to vary my program. My water aerobics instructor makes sure to vary our workout each time so that we do not get caught in the grove and that we keep out edge. It has been very successful for most members of our group.
Now a days every one is showing much interest on the there physical appearance which leads to the weight loss activity this this the useful article for those kind of people who can get more advantage by reading and collecting the important things from this article.
thanks for this post- i am excited to put more workout into my schedule. I just won a $100 gift certificate to Omega Martial Arts! I will try to fit my workouts like you suggest. It will be Tae Bo, Yoga and Weights as options. I didn't really know about the 2 hour low intensity. I've always just tried to focus on 45 minutes.