A wide-spread idea in the weight lost community was that if you want to lose weight, you have to do mostly cardio trainings . Yes, this is true, but there are certain facts, that are here to convince us, that we should not avoid weight trainings , moreover, they have to be a permanent part of our EXERCISE ROUTINE .

In order to grasp the idea, you have to know the principles of both training types, and we are here to provide you with this idea.

» Weight Training Principles

The main functionality of weight trainings is building muscles. The idea of losing weight is fat loss and NOT losing muscle mass. If we already are only on a diet, we lose significant percentage of muscle mass. If we do only cardio, we would truly lose weight in the beginning, but after a while the body will look loose, and although it may sound unbelievable, our metabolism could even slow down at some point. Why would this happen?

It is actually quite simple – our body doesn’t need organs, which it doesn’t use. So if we don’t train our muscles, a certain amount of muscle mass would become useless for our organism, and the body would dissolve it for energy, due to the calorie deficiency used for fat burning. The muscle mass loss slows down metabolism drastically, which also slows down the fat burning.

It is also medically proven, that for every extra pound of muscle you put on, your body uses around 50 extra calories a day . Recent studies have shown that training with weights regularly increases basal metabolism rates up to 15% . This is because muscle is ‘metabolically active’ and burns more calories than other body tissue even when you’re not moving.

Additionally, while doing high-intensity exercise, such as hard weight training, you empty your blood, liver and muscles of glucose, which then stimulates fat burning after you stop exercising.

» Cardio Training Principles

We have outlined the weight trainings basics above, but here comes the next question – what happens, if we already have built muscles but there is plenty of fat above them? It is not very hard to answer this question. Although the body looks better shaped, there is still excessive fat that has to be taken off it.

Let’s avoid the diet topic here, and presume you already have APPROPRIATE NUTRITIONAL PLAN . What else could help us lose the extra fat – cardio training.

The cardio training has generally lower intensity then the weight training, so it doesn’t have the same muscles-prevention effect as the weight training. Even high intensity cardio training solves this matter only partially. But if we combine it with weight training we do not only keep our muscle mass, but we also burn more fat .

» How to combine weight and cardio training

There are several options for training combinations – you can either start with some cardio, then do weight lifting, or you can warm up with cardio, then do weight training, and then finish with cardio again. Many people also do both types of workouts in different days – for example – 3 days a week weight trainings, and 1 or 2 days a week - cardio trainings.

All of the above options are correct, it depends on the time you have for exercising, on your nutritional plan, or even on the types of sports you go for. One thing is important to mention here – if you start your training with cardio, remember you start burning fat after the first 10-15 minutes after you’ve started, and if you do cardio after weights, burning fat starts immediately.

After outlining the main principles of both training types, we leave to yourself to decide what workout you should use for your weight loss plan. We do not offer example workout plans, because generally a fitness program should be done individually, and depending on many factors, such as age, weight, experience with sports, free time for working out etc.

That is why we can only recommend trusted sources and websites, where the professionals can prepare just the right workout plan for you.

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