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What are you looking to accomplish? For general body fat loss and lean muscle gain first and foremost is nutrition as stated above. You need to burn more calories than you ingest, bottom line. Whether that's from cardio, weight training or both does not matter. That being said resistance training goes a long way as far as burning calories and more so increasing lean muscle. Muscle burns calories so you want more muscle.
What's worked for me as far as building lean muscle and losing body fat is full body resistance training. Done so in a circuit or minimal rests between sets type training. An example would be push up's instead of bench press. Push ups incorporate more muscles than lying on a bench. I rarely lie or sit on a machine. I try to do all body weight exercises, exercises while standing, or on a stability ball. This way it activates more muscles thus more calories burned.
High intensity cardio will be the most valuable use of your time as far as burning calories. Strength training certainly burns calories, but not as much in the same amount of time, not even close, unless you are doing hard-core bodybuilder type of training. And if you are overweight, I doubt that is the case. Go for the cardio.
What are you looking to accomplish? For general body fat loss and lean muscle gain first and foremost is nutrition as stated above. You need to burn more calories than you ingest, bottom line. Whether that's from cardio, weight training or both does not matter. That being said resistance training goes a long way as far as burning calories and more so increasing lean muscle. Muscle burns calories so you want more muscle.
What's worked for me as far as building lean muscle and losing body fat is full body resistance training. Done so in a circuit or minimal rests between sets type training. An example would be push up's instead of bench press. Push ups incorporate more muscles than lying on a bench. I rarely lie or sit on a machine. I try to do all body weight exercises, exercises while standing, or on a stability ball. This way it activates more muscles thus more calories burned.
Do you belong to a gym?
yay! I just joined one of the 24hr Fitness gyms today and have 3 personal training sessions to start. Hopefully they can put me on the right path instead of me trying to guess what to do. Mostly I just need to lose weight and tone up
If one is overweight than what is better? High reps and 3 sets of each machine or heavier weights and maybe only do two more intense sets?
As the others have said, your number one priority should be what is consumed at your dinner table. This is of the utmost importance when it comes to losing weight - your nutrition plan. Notice I didnt say "diet", because to most people, that term denotes "suffering" or omitting something from what you eat which is a "negative". I prefer "Nutrition Plan" because you want to ONLY eat good food and you want to ONLY eat enough that will allow you to lose weight, but yet still provide your body with enough energy to propel you through your workouts.
The "high Rep/Low weight" sham has been around for years and unfortunately is repeated over and over again by NON workout experts like what you'll find in Cosmo, Redbook, etc. I saw one article where it said "grab a can of soup in each hand and lift overhead ........." Talk about a WTF moment.
The thing with strength training is that in order to get stronger, you must lift heavier. You will only gain weight if you are eating A LOT. But if you're nutrition plan is in order, you will definitely see a rapid fat loss and increased energy levels. I say go for heavier weight (where you fail by rep 10-12) or do body weight Tabatas where you are operating at highest possible speed for 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds x 8 sets.
I would say the crucial thing for me was carefully monitoring my food intake, (which included a target calorie count based on my level of activity, and making sure to eat particular types of foods for my individual nutritional needs - i.e. special attention to include lean iron-rich foods, and various other foods that assist proper iron absorption, since I'm severely anemic, etc.). From an exercise standpoint, it wasn't so much focusing on strength training specifically as it was increasing my cardiovascular fitness. Lots of active, heart-pumping stuff. The increased strength came along as part and parcel of all that. I don't actually lift at all, or do that much in terms of resistance training, but I'm seeing my fitness improve drastically just focusing on cardio/endurance and careful food choice.
Location: West Los Angeles and Rancho Palos Verdes
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaBeez
As the others have said, your number one priority should be what is consumed at your dinner table. This is of the utmost importance when it comes to losing weight - your nutrition plan. Notice I didnt say "diet", because to most people, that term denotes "suffering" or omitting something from what you eat which is a "negative". I prefer "Nutrition Plan" because you want to ONLY eat good food and you want to ONLY eat enough that will allow you to lose weight, but yet still provide your body with enough energy to propel you through your workouts.
The "high Rep/Low weight" sham has been around for years and unfortunately is repeated over and over again by NON workout experts like what you'll find in Cosmo, Redbook, etc. I saw one article where it said "grab a can of soup in each hand and lift overhead ........." Talk about a WTF moment.
The thing with strength training is that in order to get stronger, you must lift heavier. You will only gain weight if you are eating A LOT. But if you're nutrition plan is in order, you will definitely see a rapid fat loss and increased energy levels. I say go for heavier weight (where you fail by rep 10-12) or do body weight Tabatas where you are operating at highest possible speed for 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds x 8 sets.
For a while I did high weight low reps -- I did ten reps which is about where I felt my limit was -- repeated amongst my other exercises, and now I'm back to lifting lower weight and higher reps (twenty to thirty) because I don't think I got quite as much from the low rep burnout sets. Part of it may be genetic in that I'm partly of Alpinid (Central European "mountain people") extraction, but I'm not certain how weight training results vary according to different body types.
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