What Does Resistance Training Do To Your Body?

Question:

Is resistance training supposed to make you gain weight, and look bulkier because of the added muscle?

Or is it meant to tone down your body, and lose the fat?

Do you get bulkier or smaller from resistance training?

Responses to “What Does Resistance Training Do To My Body?”

• Keep in mind that muscle and fat are two entirely different things: muscle can never turn into fat, and fat can never turn into muscle. So, if you increase the amount of muscle you have without decreasing the amount of fat you have (weight training without diet/cardio) you might gain weight and look bulkier. If you increase the amount of muscle you have and decrease the amount of fat you have (weight training WITH diet/cardio) you may lose weight and will appear to be leaner. Regardless of your goal of looking lean or bulky, you should always lift weights that are heavy enough to make completing more than 15 repetitions very difficult. Lifting “light” weights won’t really make you gain much muscle – after all, if you lifted a pencil 100 times, would you expect to see any results from it?

  No.Whether you are going for “lean” or “bulky,” increasing the amount of muscle you have is always a good thing! Keep it up!

• The thing that will really accelerate your weight loss is resistance training (strength training). The toning will just come naturally from that. Resistance training will build lean muscle. It’s not just for guys. Women can do it, too, but they won’t bulk up like a man because women don’t the have testosterone to bulk up.

  Each pound of lean muscle burns about 40-50 calories per day at a resting metabolic rate. Add 10 lbs of muscle and you’ll burn 400-500 calories. Add 20 lbs and you’ll double that. Forget about how much you weigh. The real results are in inches lost.

  You want high-intensity workouts. “Intensity” doesn’t mean working out like crazy. It doesn’t mean getting exhausted from an intense workout. It means exercising each muscle to or very close to failure. And the best part is, you don’t need endless sets of repetitions to do it and you CAN do it in about 30-45 minutes several times a week without going to the gym.

  Get yourself a good set of resistance bands that come with varying resistance levels, handles, ankle straps and a door anchor. The bands should have clips on the end so you can use them with all of those attachments. With that set-up, you can do virtually any exercise that gym equipment can do without any other equipment.

  I also recommend downloading a copy of the Fat Burning Furnace because it goes hand-in-hand with resistance training. Plus, it will show you how to have a lean body without over-training, something so many people do. You do NOT have to work out for hours a day, every day.