Vasco Pita - Personal Trainer
Over the last few years, there has been a revolution in the fitness world regarding losing body fat. The two main forms of training that people use for this is weight training and long duration cardio.
Weight training involves lifting a set weight for a particular exercise. Generally speaking, people use a pre-determined number of sets and repetitions for each exercise.
Long distance cardio involves either doing exercise such as running or cycling either outdoors or in a gym for long periods of time.
Up until the last few years, it was generally believed that everyone needed to do cardio for hours and hours, especially with regards to women. In fact, the most common thing you hear from most girls in a gym is “weights will give me big muscles.” This couldn’t be any further from the truth. Outlined below are the 2 major reasons why this is the case.
Weights vs Cardio
One of the biggest advantages of weight training versus long distance cardio is that a 30 minute, intense, weight training program will burn a lot more calories than a full hour of running or cycling. Not only will it burn more calories during the 30 minute workout but also for up to 36 hours after. What this means is that you could be sitting on the couch for the rest of the day after a weight training session and still be burning a shed load of calories 7 hours after your workout.
Low intensity/Long distance cardio unfortunately will not do this. You will still burn calories while you’re running, and for about an hour after the workout. However, after this, you will not burn any excess calories that you normally would do anyway.
Now the 2nd point I want to make regarding the 2 methods is that long distance cardio cannot effectively shape someone’s body, whereas weight training can. Weight training does not mean you have to be lifting incredibly heavy weights, or that you have to leaving the gym barely able to walk. Certainly for women the fear is that lifting weights will give you big muscles. Weight training does not have to be maximal effort work, all we want to do here is maintain or build our muscle mass. Muscle will burn calories, fat wont. So build your muscle, and burn more fat. Long distance cardio retains fat and burns muscle. Not what we want here!
Women can build lots of muscle, but it takes much longer and a very strict, controlled diet. Men however can build large amounts of muscle quickly with weight training. However, both women and men will both strip body fat while doing weights.
To put it very simply, men have high amounts of a hormone called testosterone, women have less of it. Testosterone is the key hormone that increases muscle mass. This is the main factor why women cannot build muscle quickly like a man can. Women’s diets have to be far more controlled to bring levels of this hormone up, whereas men’s levels are already high.
In conclusion, weight training, with the right nutrition plan, is by far the most effective way of stripping body fat and increasing general fitness.
