OnFitness Magazine - November/December 2021 - 61

61 WWW.ONFITNESSMAG.COM | VOL 22 NO 3 | 2021
Catching
balls to
improve
coordination
The risk of falls in
older people can be
reduced if they
repeatedly catch a
medicine ball that's
tossed to them.
4: REST-BASED STRAIGHT
SETS FOR MAXIMAL FAT
LOSS
S
ets, repetitions, and recovery periods have always
defined traditional strength training. This
concept harkens back to the roots of resistance
exercise, which has historically been about two
things: enhancing performance and building muscle.
But, we now know weightlifting does more than
making us bigger, faster, or stronger. It also burns
many more calories than we once believed. And we've
discovered its powerful hormonal effects can alter not
just muscle-building but also fat-burning.
When most people think about burning fat in the
context of weight training, the argument usually goes
like this, " Weight training burns fat because it builds
muscle, which will increase the number of calories
you burn all day long. "
This is a nice concept that has a measure of truth,
but research does not back this up. The number of
extra calories burned per pound of muscle is
somewhere in the range of six to thirty, hardly
anything to write home about.
The next argument for weight training's fatburning
potential is excess post-exercise oxygen
consumption, more commonly known as the exercise
after-burn. Again, claims are overblown here. Yes,
resistance training delivers a much greater after-burn
compared to cardiovascular exercise, but studies done
on more traditional weight training show this is not
nearly as pronounced as some like to claim.
In reality, the fat-burning effects of weight training
likely have to do with several mechanisms that all add
up to a powerful fat-burning punch. Weight training
burns greater amounts of fat during exercise than we
ever imagined.
It also has a hormonal response that makes the
body more efficient so the body can use more fat
without needing to elevate metabolism. Finally, there
is a huge amount of energy required after intense
weight training. This energy is needed for repair and
rebuilding. This, more than anything else, is likely the
real reason for the huge after-burn reported in some
studies.
Two studies published in the Journal of Strength
and Conditioning Research shows just how inaccurate
calorie calculations for weight training can be. In
these studies, researchers applied a more accurate
measure of energy use during resistance training.
They did this by measuring aerobic metabolism
during exercise along with excess post-exercise
oxygen consumption and a separate anaerobic
measure generated by lactate. The researchers insist
these measures should be made separately. In most
studies, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption is
considered an indicator of anaerobic energy use, and
the anaerobic lactate component is left out. These
researchers show that is a mistake.
Some of the energy generated during activities
such as sprinting and lifting weights gets lost as heat
and can never be captured through excess postexercise
oxygen consumption measures. So what does
this mean? Based on the calculations in these studies,
it means you burn seventy percent more calories than
any experts ever imagined when weight training!
-
If you want to ramp up the fat-burning potential of
your weight training workouts, research shows you
have to train heavy, train a little faster, and train to
failure. This may not be the best formula for building
muscle, but it certainly won't result in losing muscle.
Two studies, one published in the International
Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism and
the other in the European Journal of Applied
Physiology, show significant after-burn effects from
this style of weight training.
These studies showed that women can elevate
their fat-burning metabolism by sixty percent for
sixteen hours, while men still had a nineteen percent
When you're in a
crowd and notice that
someone's about to
bump into you, your
brain generates
instructions for your
body to brace itself,
then instructs muscles
to prevent falling from
being bumped into.
This may involve
shifting body direction,
taking a step, leaning
one way, whatever.
The ability diminishes
as we age.
The anxiety of seeing
a ball being tossed
toward you, catching
it, and then adjusting
your body to remain
stable after the ball is
caught improves the
efficiency of your
proprioception,
postural adjustments,
and neuromuscular
coordination.
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OnFitness Magazine - November/December 2021

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