Best Weight Loss Questions and Reviews

Resistance training is when you use a counter force to exert against your body movements. It could come in the form of weights, elastic bands or even just your own body weight. The idea of resistance training is to build and tone muscle strength although a lot of people confuse this with heavy bodybuilding.

You see many individuals lose interest when you mention resistance training because they think it is hardcore stuff that is for the meat heads at the gym. They could not be more wrong. Basic resistance training lasting just a few minutes every day can give a boost to your metabolism and kick start your fat loss program.

Resistance training for ordinary people.

Depending on how fit you are, these exercises can vary in intensity. The important factor is that you start where you can and try to build on your strength slowly. This form of exercising can be applied to overweight as well as healthy people. You just need to modify the exercises to what suits you best.

Push up – It might be impossible for a person to do even 1. That does not mean that you do not qualify for resistance training. What you should instead do is a ladies push up where you put some weight on your knees and try to do the push up normally.

Pull up – This is a very difficult exercise and even people in good shape find it difficult to do a few. You should use a weight assisted pull up machine to do at least a few.

Squat – The picture that comes to mind is a body builder squatting with a ton of weight on his shoulders. That is resistance training for him but for you it could just be squatting five or six times without any weight. You will still be using your body weight which provides the counter force in this case.

Why you will see accelerated fat loss with resistance training?

Most of these exercises focus on building the large muscle groups in your body. Your chest, back, shoulders and thighs are large muscles. When you train these muscles with resistance, they grow stronger, and thus need more fuel to burn. Stronger does not mean bulging muscles but being able to at least lift your body weight.

That does not mean that you need to train like Arnold to lose weight. If for example you were able to do 5 push ups before and you trained to a point where you can do 15 push ups. This means that you have improved muscle mass significantly which will boost your metabolism by as much as 30-40%. That increased metabolism is what will trigger accelerated fat loss in you.