Many wonder if weight training or even lifting heavy weights affects weight reduction and calorie expenditure. Well, the answer is YES, exercising with weights not only reduces fat deposits but also strengthens your body and makes your immunity stronger. Weight training has been shown to speed up your metabolism for the next 24 hours, and most importantly, it reduces stress and releases you of negative energy.
Exercise alone is insufficient for long term weight loss, but combining diet and exercise improves your chances of losing weight and keeping it off. Weight training helps preserve lean body mass, increases total energy output, and speeds fat use after exercise. Weight training increases energy output nearly as much as aerobics does. If you train hard, it also increases the amount of calories you burn while digesting food.
Above all, it increases the amount of calories you burn during and after exercise and mostly by increasing fat-free mass. Even at rest, your muscles are using a lot of energy because they are highly metabolic tissues. This means that your metabolic rate is higher if you have more muscles. More muscles makes it easier to burn calories and create a negative energy balance that metabolizes fat.
Weight training can also help you maintain your muscle mass when you are trying to lose weight, it helps you to avoid the significant drop in resting metabolic rate associated with weight loss. If you are lifting weights, you will find it easier to lose fat, maintain your current weight and body posture, and look great at the same time.
Another well-known thing is a problem called osteoporosis that occurs in women after the age of fifty. However, this problem occurs from earlier days and gradually spreads, until it reaches its maximum at a later age. Weight training has been shown to have a positive effect on osteoporosis. In osteoporosis, bone mass is so low that even minor trauma can cause fracture and most commonly in the hip, spine and wrist.
It is a major public health concern and it is linked with more than 1.5 million fractures a year. One of the best ways to prevent osteoporosis, or at least alleviate its effects, is to build bone mass and strong muscles by exercising with weights, eating properly and getting enough calcium, and of course being physically active every day.
Most women are afraid of exercising with weights because they think that lifting weights will create a muscular body that they think is not so feminine. That is the main problem. Building muscle mass and shaping the body is a process that does not happen overnight and there is no need to fear that you will wake up in the morning with a body you did not want to.
Of course, building muscle mass is gradual and you can always tell yourself when you have had enough and when you are satisfied with your body. With the right coach next to you, your progress will go the right way, while the effects of exercise will remain visible for a long time. Most importantly, you will learn to exercise properly and with the continuity of training, you will accept physical exercise as an integral part of your life, from which you will not be able to separate.
Thus, the use of weights during training is very important for maintaining or losing fat deposits. Basic exercises that you can do with weights that involve large muscle groups, and therefore require higher calorie consumption.
WEIGHT TRAINING EXERCISES:
1. SQUAD WITH DUMBBELLS
This exercise involves the use of two dumbbells, which you hold in your hands next to your body. Assume athletic stance with dumbbells at sides and feet slightly wider than hip width. Keeping back straight and knees behind toes, sink hips back and lower into squat until thighs are parallel to ground.
Extend hips and knees to drive up out of squat position. Repeat for specified reps. Beginners should focus on perfecting form and technique before adding resistance. Perform bodyweight Squats or Wall Squats if you are beginner.
2. CHEST PRESS WITH DUMBBELLS, BARBELL OR SMITH MACHINE
This exercise targets the main muscle of the chest, the pectorals. It also uses the anterior deltoids of the shoulder and the triceps brachii of the upper arm. Building chest support and definition is desirable for a fit look, but building this muscle is also functional.
You need strong pecs for power for sports where you swing a bat, racket, or club. The chest press also helps you with any daily activities that require pushing or carrying.
3. BARBELL GLUTE BRIDGE
The barbell glute bridge is a weight-bearing version of the glute bridge exercise. It allows you to build strength and endurance in your gluteal muscles. Your gluteal muscles are three muscles located in your buttocks. These are: the gluteus maximus, the gluteus minimus, the gluteus medius. A barbell glute bridge is much like a regular glute bridge that uses your body weight to build muscle.
But instead of pointing your arms toward your feet, you hold a barbell positioned across your hips while completing the exercise. Beginners should start lifting with only the barbell, then add weights over time as their muscles strengthen.
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4. DUMBBELL ROWS FOR THE BACK
For this move, hinge from the hips, keeping the back flat and the abs engaged. The weights (which should be on the heavy side) hang down and you squeeze the back to pull the elbows up to torso level. You don’t want to yank the weights up, but really use those back muscles to regulate the movement.
The elbows should stop just above torso level. Because you’re bent over with weights hanging down, your lower back works hard to keep your body in position. Bend the knees if you feel the strain in your lower back and keep your abs engaged.
5. DUMBBELL SHOULDER PRESS
If you are new to the overhead press, you should start with the seated dumbbell shoulder press. Using an upright bench will provide stability during the movement to stop you overarching your lower back and allow you to concentrate on keeping tension through your shoulders when pressing the weight.
Using dumbbells allows for greater control and range of movement, both of which are ideal for learning new movement patterns of an exercise and can allow you to add weight quickly. By using dumbbells you’ll work each side of the body unilaterally, which should ensure that you don’t have any strength imbalances.
So even if you’re accomplished at the overhead press you should sub in dumbbells from time to time just to check that both sides are working equally when lifting the bar, rather than one doing the bulk of the work.
Our personal trainers are always available to help turn your vision into reality! Personal trainers not only making the commitment to change your life, but you are also bringing someone into your life who will be cheering you on every step of the way. With our personal trainers you are going to learn all of this exercises and much more.
Take the time to invest in yourself and create a plan with a trainer today to start getting results tomorrow! Health and strength, friends!
