The power of weight training

Lately a good friend of mine has been posting a lot about weight training.  I love hearing her comments and knowing that another person out there understands the awesomeness that is weight training.  But I realize that a lot of people might not incorporate this important aspect of fitness into their daily gym routine.

For the better part of my life (or perhaps, my "fitness life"?) I thought that working out meant jumping on the elliptical trainer for 30 minutes and watching an episode of The Office while I moved my legs around. And while I can't speak enough about the benefits of cardio training, it wasn't until recently that I realized the importance of serious weight training (and saw the benefits!).  I read a really good article the other day entitled 8 Reasons To Lift Heavy Weights.  You can read the article here.

One of the reasons the article lists is that you'll burn more calories.  While it's true the the actual act of weight lifting won't burn as many calories as a cardio session, it does put the body in a better position to burn calories through out the day.  It has been proven that muscle is more metabolically active than fat and thus will burn more calories when you are at rest.  So, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn (even when you are sleeping!).  It's brilliant, right? Give you body a little lean muscle to replace the fat, and it'll do the work for you while you sit on your bum! ...Ok, well maybe it's not THAT simple, but you get the point.  You'll also continue to burn calories for a longer period of time after your training session. And when you increase the amount of weight you are lifting, you can burn almost twice as many calories during the two hours after your training session! So when I do the grocery shopping after a trip to the gym, I know that my body is furiously burning calories while I try to decide between regular and organic black beans! Isn't that great?

In addition to helping your body burn calories, weight training can build bone density, prevent injury, and help you loose belly fat. YES! Lifting weights (say a good shoulder exercise) can help you loose the belly pooch! You can't spot reduce fat, but your body has pre-conceived places where it likes to store fat. For most of us, one of those places is our belly.  A study out of the University of Alabama showed that women who lifted weights lost more belly fat than those who did cardio alone.  And while we all want to look good in a bikini, this also helps to prevent some kinds of cancer and can lessen your risk of diabetes. ALL. GOOD. THINGS.

However, a lot of women worry that if they lift weights they'll look bulky or man-ish.  But the opposite is actually true. Our bodies need testosterone to really bulk up.  Because women only produce this hormone in small amounts, we tend to lean out when we lift weights.  So lifting weights can actually help us to look leaner!

The tricky part is knowing where to start. Over the next few week's I'll be posting exercises that I like to do for specific muscle groups.  I hope that these will help you to get out on the weight floor and make your body the healthiest, most attractive fat-burning machine it can be! Happy lifting!