As mentioned in part 1, muscles are extremely important for maintaining and
elevating our metabolism. If we begin to lose muscle through excessive cardio
(check out part 1)
We begin to slow down our metabolic rate and hold onto bodyfat more
efficiently, the complete opposite of what we desire.
What is the goal of a fat loser?
‘To burn as many calories during the workout and raise the metabolism after
your training session’.
What if we could raise our metabolism for up to 36 hours after exercise?
Well this becomes possible when we introduce weights into our training
programme.
If we really want to speed our metabolism for an extra day and a half and I’m
guessing if you’re reading this article you do. Then we need to involve as many
muscles in our exercise or workout as we can.
This is exactly what happens when you train with free weights and/or you train
more functionally when using what I call the 600 muscle rule.
Our body has over 600 muscles, if we can actively stimulate as many of those
muscles as possible within one exercise, we will naturally stimulate and raise our
metabolic rate.
When we talk about functionally using the exercise, we are referring to using
free weights and performing exercises on your feet. Straight away this begins to
involve our stabilizing muscles such as our abdominals and glutes (bum). These
muscles alone once involved will have a dramatic effect on speeding up the
metabolism.
Something else we produce when performing this kind exercise is something
called EPOC (Excessive Post Oxygen Consumption) meaning that our body has to
work harder to produce more oxygen to recover. This is where we are able to
raise the metabolism for up to 36 hours after exercise and where weights play a
vital part in fat loss.
To get the maximum effects of EPOC, we have to use weights to make our
muscles work even harder. We can turn our everyday exercises such as the
squat, lunge and step up into a more intense exercise by adding weight that we
can do for no more than 12 repetitions.
Now this is pretty much common sense and the out come will be more muscle
meaning increased calorific expenditure and increased metabolism. In fact for
every pound of muscle, the body will burn approximately 50 calories extra!
Unfortunately, a common problem with training this way, at least more common
for women is they begin to add a little too much muscle, especially on the thighs.
I’m not going to go into the science of why this happens but this is where we
need a more even balance of exercise routines which you will get in part 4. So
don’t panic too much.
So with a combination of strength exercise to increase lean muscle whilst at the
same time reducing the amount of aerobic exercise and instead focusing on
higher intensity cardiovascular exercise. We already have a better idea of
personal programme design for us to achieve maximum results for fat loss.
There is of course one more thing that will slow down the process of too much
muscle and at the same time increase our muscle firmness more than any of the
previous. But you’ll have to read part 3 for that kind of information.
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