Health Topics
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Healthy Living
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October 2011
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| Strength Training to Boost Metabolism |
| Shaik Murtuza |
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Strength training is the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build the strength, anaerobic endurance, and size of skeletal muscles. Strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvement in overall health, a tremendous increase in metabolism, and improves cardiac function. |
There are three ways strength training can increase metabolism:
- The workout session itself
- The post-training oxygen consumption following exercise
- The addition of lean muscle mass
- The effect of a strength training session on post-exercise energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate concludes that strenuous strength training can elevate metabolic rate for extended periods, and that this increased metabolism is due to the oxidation of body fat.
Few things to do
Build muscle mass: When you increase your muscle mass, you boost your resting metabolism -- and that makes your body burn more calories, "That's why I recommend adding weight training to an exercise programme."Use hand weights to do bicep curls, use weight machines at a gym, even doing specific calisthenics like push-ups and abdominal crunches.Squats with weights can increase a huge metabolic output.
Get plenty of cardiovascular exercise: There’s no getting around it – the biggest burn comes from cardiovascular exercise. That means running, hiking, walking, cycling, taking aerobics classes, dancing, kickboxing, or using cardio machines at a gym, anything that gets your heart rate up. This helps in increasing the oxygen consumption and thereby increases the metabolism.
Ideally, you should do this four to five times a week for 30 to 40 minutes each time. The whole idea here is just getting out there and burning as many calories as you can.
Focus on frequency, duration, and intensity: As long as you step up your exercise programme from what you're doing now, you're going to see faster weightloss results.Step up the amount of exercise, the length of time of your workouts and the intensity, and you'll definitely see progress.
Target losing few pounds a week: If you think about it, one pound of body weight equals 3,500 calories. That's a lot to burn! By adding lean mass the benefit of burning tremendous amount of fat is achievable.
Always remember that it is all about coming out of your comfort zone! |
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