Personal Fitness Training Articles
Resistance Training
Resistance training is an often overlooked aspect of training to lose fat and weight. For many people, in order to lose fat they will change their diet and reduce calories and will also start doing cardiovascular activities. Both of these are great tools and will definitely be beneficial in the quest to lose fat and weight. But if you look at this plan of attack closely, there is a very important piece missing. If you read the title of this article then you already know the answer, and that is Resistance Training.
Resistance training is one of the best and fastest ways to shed fat and reduce overall body fat to lose weight. The reason for this is simple. Resistance training significantly raises your metabolism. Your metabolism is what processes the calories and nutrients in your body to be used for energy. So as you can see, the higher your metabolism, the more calories you burn. The more calories you burn, the more fat and weight you lose. This plays a huge role in your Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption or EPOC, which is when your metabolism is elevated after exercise. (See my article on EPOC and Fat Loss for more info.).
So whereas a reduced calorie meal plan and the proper amount of cardiovascular exercise are very important, you must have resistance training as well. Each one of these are extremely important on your road to success. But each one by themselves doesn’t even come close to the effectiveness of utilizing the three tools together to alter body composition. A three pronged attack of cardio, eating right, and resistance training gives you the best chance of achieving your goals, no matter what that goal is.
Resistance Training is also very important to implement in order to correct postural and muscular imbalances. Many of us have huge postural issues due to sitting at a desk for most of our day, or driving in a car for long periods of time. In these cases, the posterior muscles, or back muscles are usually not as strong as the muscles on the front of our bodies (i.e.- our shoulders and chest.). So it is then very necessary for us to train our posterior muscles to balance our bodies out. This significantly improves the posture and will also assist in reducing many issues that come with postural imbalances such as headaches and tension in the neck. I won’t go too much into posture in this article, as this particular one is centered on resistance training. But the example illustrates my point perfectly. There are many reasons for implementing resistance training into an exercise program and the examples that I have given you are just to name a few. So if you are ready to reap the benefits of resistance training and change your body please contact us.
