Have Muscle, Burn Fat!

You’ve heard me say countless times by now that long duration cardio is one of the LEAST effective ways to lose body fat.

One thing that perhaps I haven’t emphasized enough however, is this: one of the BEST ways to lose body fat is to increase or maintain muscle tissue.

Let’s be clear about this: I did NOT say go get big muscles.  I said increase or maintain your muscle tissue and strength.  Subtle, yet very important difference.

Far too often, people associate strength and muscle increases with big, inflated biceps, deltoids, pecs, etc.  (like this guy…who doesn’t do drugs…really…)

Because most women have a phobia about increasing size and getting “bulky”, and because most men figure out in their early 20’s that big muscles are useless as a general rule, they de-prioritize or avoid strength training.

This is where some confusion comes in because this may seem like a conundrum to many: increase lean muscle tissue without getting “big muscles”?   Let me address some common questions/areas of confusion as to how increasing muscle tissue sheds fat and how increasing muscle doesn’t mean “big muscles”:

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          Strength training is NOT what people think it is

People get confused as to what strength training is.  Let me clear up what it is NOT:  Strength training is NOT sitting on benches.  It is NOT sitting on machines.  Strength training is NOT training one muscle at a time.

Those training methodologies were born from people trying to sell you gym memberships and from people trying to convince themselves, and you, that they actually work hard.  (Yeah, that last set of reverse grip tricep pushdowns looked pretty grueling.  Definitely justified the noise you made and the “tough guy” look you shot into the mirror…)

Real strength training, that is to say strength training that actually improves strength and quality of muscle tissue, involves total body movements, not the one muscle at a time approach.  Real strength training involves you supporting your own body weight, not a machine or bench supporting all the weight while you use leverage to move it.

Real strength training that involves your entire body without the aid of benches and machines and is done with limited rest periods burns a boat load of calories and kicks your metabolism in the ass.

·         The intensity of a total body strength workout in and of itself will raise your metabolism:

A workout that increases muscle tissue requires enough intensity within the workout that your resting metabolic rate will be raised as a result.  This is a good thing: this means you will be burning more calories the other 23 hours of the day after a strength workout than from something lower in intensity like traditional cardio training.  This is the biggest problem with cardio training – it simply isn’t as intense as strength training and therefore can’t impact your metabolism positively.

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Maintaining the muscle requires an increase in RMR

Your body has to work pretty hard just to maintain muscle.  The processing of calories becomes more efficient as you body goes into overdrive to be sure that any calories you do ingest go directly to muscle repair or energy replacement.  And if calories and energy are being used to be sure that muscles are maintained and energy is being replaced, then guess where calories AREN’T going…

·         There are 700 muscles in the body.

The reality is this:  If you utilize total body strength training – NOT isolated muscle strength training – you will have a small increase in muscle size, if there is any increase at all.  This is due to the fact that the weight you’re lifting, which should be pretty substantial if you’re using your whole body, is spread out evenly over every muscle in your body.  Because you’re never isolating and/or overloading one muscle, there will never be any substantial increase in any one muscle.  If you know me, Dina, or any of the regulars at the TR, you know two things: 1. we’ve been doing total body strength training with the heaviest things we can find for a long time, and 2. “Bulky” is the LAST thing that people would call us.

Here’s the issue that most people overlook:  There are about 700 muscles in the human body.  If each one increases in size .001% from total body strength training, that’s negligible from a visual standpoint.  (As opposed to if you only trained your arms with curls and extensions, your arms would get noticeably bigger.  And you’d look like an ass because nothing else on your body would.)  However, that minor increase adds up as far as your metabolism is concerned.  .001% times 700 is enough of an increase to put your metabolism to work as mentioned above.

Bottom line: if you do intense total body strength training, you will increase and/or maintain your strength and muscle tissue.  You will positively impact your RMR.  You will lose body fat.  You will feel better and look better.

Think about the people at Globo gym right now: most do what they think is strength training followed by low intensity cardio.  In other words, two things that a) are time consuming and b) do not burn a significant number of calories, and c) have little impact on the metabolism, so there’s very little calorie burning, if any, when the workout is over.

And even though you may not get big muscles in the traditional sense doing total body strength training, you will be able to see your muscles because the body fat will be reduced.  And who among us doesn’t want that?

Be strong, have some muscle, have very little fat.  Sounds like a plan.