If you lift weights to improve strength or gain muscle mass, you've probably wondered just how much weight you should lift. Most of us tend to err on the lighter side, something researchers have already figured out. If you feel like your weight training program has stalled, or if you're not seeing the results you'd like, learn why lifting heavier weights could change your entire body. Muscle plays a role in raising metabolism which can help you to change your body composition and burn more fat.
A pound of muscle burns about calories per day while a pound of fat burns only 5 calories. So, muscle growth helps you burn more calories all day long.
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But, in addition to weight loss, other benefits of strength training include:. However, all of this only works if you're using enough weight to stimulate that muscle growth.
In other words, if you can lift the weights you've chosen for most exercises more than times, you might not see the kind of fat loss you would if you increased your weight. According to a study done by the University of Michigan, researchers took beginners both men and women through a series of moves, allowing them to choose their own weight. After assessing their 1 rep max , they determined that most chose a weight well below what was needed to stimulate muscle growth.
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So, why don't we lift more weight? For some, especially people new to weight training, it can be scary. There are so many types of equipment—machines, dumbbells, cables, and bands. And then there are tons of exercises, it's hard to know where to start. Most of all, we know that lifting weights can make us sore and, potentially, put us at risk for injury. It seems much easier to either avoid weight training or choose weights that are too light to make much of a difference. Aside from that, there are other fears that invade our minds.
The goal of weight training , if you didn't know, is to lift as much weight as you possibly can with good form for the number of reps you've chosen. In daily life, we typically don't push ourselves to fatigue in anything we do, so this idea may not only feel foreign, it may feel downright strange.
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That's one reason it's best for beginners to gradually work towards that. But lifting more weight can also be confusing. When you haven't lifted weights before, you may not know what's too heavy and what's too light. It may take some time to get a feel for your body and what it can handle.
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Many people err on the lighter side when they train simply out of fear of injury. Because our muscles burn when we challenge them with resistance, people often feel they're injuring themselves when they lift. And injury can be a real fear for beginners since injury can occur if you max out before your body is ready for it. Taking it slow while still challenging your body will help protect you from injury. There's still a tired old weight training myth running around that men should lift heavy and women should lift light to avoid getting big and bulky. Women hear this: Lifting heavy weights will not make you huge—you simply don't have the testosterone levels to build big muscles.
Lifting heavy weights will help you get strong and lose fat. The other thing about lifting weights is the psychological factor. The discomfort level associated with training to fatigue is pretty high.
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Again, this is one reason it's best to err on the side of caution if you need to , while always working towards more challenge and more weight. These concerns often keep people lifting the same amount of weight for weeks, months or even years. Most of these fears are unfounded if you take time to ease into a weight training program and work slowly towards the muscle fatigue that will make your muscles grow. With all this in mind, you may wonder how to choose the amount of weight to lift.
Weight Training: Low Reps or High Reps for Weight Loss?
Osteoporosis becomes a risk factor once women reach their mids, making heavy lifting even more important. Not to mention, lifting heavy in a controlled manner actually activates more muscle fibers than high-rep exercises 4. This is because Type 2 fast-twitch muscle fibers get highly engaged when we lift heavy. This is true even more so when we lower weight slowly in a controlled manner also called eccentric training. Working out at a high intensity has been shown not only to affect our bodies in the short-term as in weight loss , but also leads to long-term changes that can help us stay lean in the future.
Our muscles contain the highest amount of mitochondria in the body. This means that essentially the more lean muscle you have, the better you are at using the food you consume for energy, instead of storing it as fat. By far, performing compound exercises using heavy weights is one of the best ways to blast fat. This is because compound exercises, such as squat presses, lunge presses, and the deadlift-to-row, create a massive afterburn that nice calorie-burning side effect we talked about earlier due to their ability to work nearly all of the large muscle groups simultaneously.
A great compound exercise workout would look like the sample workout below, using a weight you can only lift for 6 to 8 reps. Complete the entire circuit three times through, with a 20 to 30 second rest between exercises and a one-minute rest between rounds. Of course, you can include any number of compound exercises to a routine, just be sure that the weight is challenging and that you keep the rest to a minimum between exercises. The main thing to remember when you comes across the high rep vs. Heavy weight training with low reps provides this challenge, while high reps leave a lot to be desired.
Melting fat will be your reassurance that you made the right training decision. A great way to torch fat is to combine strength training and interval cardio.