It might be counter intuitive, but a great way to lose weight, especially fat, is to hit the gym and lift weights. Don't get us wrong: Cardio work is great and burns calories, which is important. But when you build muscle by lifting weights, you are increasing the total calories your body burns at rest. The bigger the muscles you have, the more calories you burn when you are just sitting around. If you try some of our tips in this article, you'll begin to lose weight when you lift weights.
First, when you weight lift, you are going to build muscle by overloading your muscles. To boost your muscle mass, you need to use more weight than your muscles like. The more you lift, the more you will be able to do, so it's important to increase your weights and vary your sets over time or your body will get used to what you are doing. You always want to be challenging your muscles and doing things that make them hurt. That's how you build muscle.
When you do a set, you should be able to just barely finish the last reps of a set, while still having good form. If you aren't getting that sort of feeling, increase the weight. And if your form is a mess because it's too heavy, lower the weight. Good weightlifting form is very important to get good results.
Every week or month, you will want to change up your weightlifting workout to burn calories. You want it to get more challenging over time. Increase weight, change exercises or change your numbers of sets and reps. You might do a week of heavier weights and low reps, then a week of lighter weights and higher reps.
Next, you will want to select which weightlifting exercises you want to focus on at first. We generally recommend 8-10 exercises for a beginning weight lifter. Think about doing about 1 exercise per group of muscles per workout.
For your chest, you can do bench press, the pectoral machine, or a chest press piece of equipment. For the back, try rows, extensions for the back, or a machine with lateral pulldowns. For shoulders, you can try front raises and lateral raises.
For your biceps, the basic curl is great as is hammer curling. We also like to do power cleans and clean and jerk exercises with a barbell. These are fantastic exercises for your legs, back, arms, shoulders and more. A power clean or clean and jerk works many muscle groups in one exercise and they are a couple of our favorite weightlifting exercises. These exercises are strenuous, so you will find yourself getting winded and your pulse skyrocketing, which is great cardio work too.
You will want to do at least one exercise for every major group of muscles. We usually like to focus on the big muscle groups first, such as the legs, and then work down to the smaller groups of muscles.
Hopefully you will start lifting weights soon and you will find that you definitely lose weight and burn more fat.
Lawrence Reaves writes articles For Beginners - Click here for advice on Weight Training For Beginners
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