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Weight Training To LOSE FAT Faster (5 Proven Methods)

Weight Training To LOSE FAT Faster (5 Proven Methods)

by | Apr 23, 2023 | Blog, Exercises

“My weight loss results are so slow! I should probably just do more cardio!”

Many of us have turned to cardio in the past to try to see better results faster.

But not only may this additional cardio actually be SABOTAGING our fat loss results, we may see better results by simply adjusting our weight training routine.

And if you’re about to say that diet is key, yes it matters most for fat loss.

However, the most efficient results, and most lasting, happen when our diet and workouts work together. 

And when it comes to amazing body recomposition, weight training wins out over cardio in terms of the biggest benefits! 

Better fat loss happens when we see our training as a chance to build muscle! 

So how is cardio sabotaging your fat loss and what are 5 ways to see better results? 

First let’s ask Why do we turn to cardio in the first place?

We turn to cardio in an attempt to burn more calories.

And it does…At least to start.

But not only do we adapt to not actually burn as many calories over time as we get used to the distance and pace, but we can also end up creating too extreme a deficit to start between our training and calorie intake, which can result in metabolic adaptations. 

We can lose muscle mass through this overtraining and underfueling. 

Not to mention we can send our body into survival mode, which means we will actually find ways to expend less calories during the course of our day. 

This ultimately NEGATES the increased calorie burn from our training.

Now if you’re a runner or cyclist or endurance athlete, I’m not telling you to stop doing what you love. 

I’m just saying that if your goal is fat loss, don’t jump to doing more cardio just to try to burn more calories.

What we also don’t realize is that doing more, training for longer and harder, especially if we are in a calorie deficit, can simply make sticking to our diet even harder. 

Ever notice you’re HUNGRIER when you start adding in more training sessions, especially more cardio?  

Another big thing we don’t consider when we add in cardio is how much HUNGRIER it can make us, especially if we are already in a deficit to lose.

So while the under eating while overtraining itself can create metabolic adaptations and hormonal imbalances, it can double sabotage us by making us feel like our body is fighting the deficit even more.

And ultimately, often we not only give in and eat more, but we end up overeating. And overeating for awhile. 

This quickly leads to us falling off our new healthy routine and makes us feel like we’ll never have the willpower to make a change.

Plus we end up gaining the weight back and usually more…and let’s face it, it’s not muscle we are regaining. It’s fat. 

When we repeat this yo-yo dieting cycle, each and every time it becomes harder and harder to lose. 

While we start to blame getting older or hormonal changes, often it is simply these previous attempts to out exercise our diet or time that have added up! 

So how can you stop this cycle and dial in your STRENGTH workouts to see the results you deserve? 

Tip #1: Address all of a muscle’s functions!

When you think about a specific muscle group, you have a “go-to” move. And often, they are go-to moves for a reason.

They work!

However, the more experienced a lifter you are, the more you want to consider including a variety of movements to work specific muscles to challenge yourself. 

This can lead to better muscular development and definition because you’re addressing all of the actions a muscle performs.

We need to focus on retaining and building muscle if we want to look leaner and lose fat. You aren’t going to become the hulk lifting heavy.

So if you want to see the best results, consider implementing different moves for the same muscle group over the course of the week.

If you want to work your hamstrings, maybe you include an Romanian Deadlift, but also a seated hamstring curl or a glute bridge and curl. 

Not only do these moves then address the fact that your hamstrings work during hip extension , but you also address their ability to flex or bend your knee. 

And then even while addressing the hamstrings ability to flex your knee, you are putting your hips in two different positions (extended with the bridge and flexed when seated) to again work the hamstrings in different ways.

Use those different postures and positions, not to mention even single leg vs two legged movements, to progress exercises and challenge your muscles!  

Tip #2: Extend rest periods.

Now this doesn’t mean standing around on your phone for 3-5 minutes looking at instagram between sets.

But it does mean realizing that if we want to keep working at a true 100% intensity, we need to give ourselves TIME to recover between rounds.

Often when we are short on time or want to make workouts FEEL harder, we cut out rest.

But this also causes our intensity to dip. 

If you want to really challenge yourself to really work muscles, you’ve got to be able to push each and every round.

So use that rest between sets!

But this doesn’t have to mean full rest.

You can even make sure a muscle group is given time to recover by alternating areas worked in supersets or trisets. 

This can help you work more areas efficiently, resting one area while working another, especially if you need a quicker training session.

And by working more muscle groups in a session, while being able to push hard, you will even increase your calorie expenditure during your training session.

Tip #3: Push to failure.

If you’ve ever just thought to yourself, “I’ll do 10 reps” and stopped at 10 because it felt hard enough, you need to push harder.  

Now this doesn’t have to mean you literally can’t lift the weight or you faceplant in a push up. 

But you need to push to that point where you wanted to stop 2 reps ago but could complete the round while still engaging the correct muscles.

You need to push closer to that point of failure.

Don’t be afraid, if your workout says 8-12 reps, to even have to put the weights down at 6, rest for 15-30 seconds then finish even 2 more reps to push slightly past what you could have done in a row. 

This push almost past failure will help you see really efficient muscle gains and will help you challenge your body.

If you want to lose fat, increasing your lean muscle mass is the best way to boost your metabolism and see lasting results! 

Tip #4: Use a variety of rep ranges.

How many reps and sets? What rep range is best?

The simplest and best answer is, use a variety.

Focus on building strength and working with those big heavy lifts in the 3-5 rep range. 

Focus more on muscle gains with compound movements that make you max out in the 6-12 rep range. 

Or focus on that strength endurance by working up toward 20 reps even! 

All of these rep ranges benefit each other, allowing you to lift more to drive muscle growth or even have better endurance to recover faster while lifting heavier!  

The key is making sure you challenge yourself for the reps you do.

No load should ever feel “light.”

And what reps you assign may even be impacted by the muscle group and type of exercise you’re including. 

For isolation moves, like bicep curls, you may do slightly more reps, working in the 10-15 rep range, over attempting a 5 rep max.  

For a heavy compound lift like the Barbell Row, you may try to hit failure at 5 reps when including it first in your workout.  

Both moves and rep ranges could be included in the same workout as you go from heavier more compound movements to more isolation exercises to target stubborn areas! 

Tip #5: Focus on intensity over doing more. Quality not quantity.

Too often we think we don’t have time to get in the workouts we need to see results. 

And sure, having a bit more time for training can have benefits.

But if you design for the time you have and focus on the QUALITY of your training sessions and giving your 100% effort, you are going to see results.

So stop making that excuse. And stop wasting your training sessions just going through the motions! 

Too often we increase the number of rounds or res to increase the difficulty of the workout, instead of focusing on maximizing the intensity of each round.   

Rather than feeling like you have the capacity to do more, figure out how can you push yourself to make the existing rounds feel more challenging.

Be intentional and get the most out of each rep. Don’t just go through the motions.

This will help you build that lean muscle!

And because diet is key, I want you to check out this video with tips to adjust your nutrition and a full day of eating next. 

–> Meal Plan To Lose Fat 

And guess what? One of those tips WILL be about one specific macro. 

Because if you want to gain muscle while being in a deficit, macros, and specifically this macro, matters most…

Check out that video to learn why! (I know you want to know now ;-P ) 

Weight Training For Fat Loss (5 Simple Tips)

Weight Training For Fat Loss (5 Simple Tips)

by | Oct 23, 2022 | Blog, Exercises, Workouts

Don’t waste your time commenting that diet is key for fat loss.

Yup. 100% it is.

BUT the best results always come when we dial in our overall lifestyle as a system to work together.

And too often we turn to cardio when we want to lose fat.

We think we even need MORE cardio to improve our results.

But not only do workouts NOT have to be just cardio or just strength, but you could technically see BETTER results by dialing in your strength training over simply adding in more cardio type workouts.

That’s why I wanted to share 5 tips to get better fat loss results from your strength workouts.

But before I do, I want to highlight why strength training and building muscle is so key if we want to look leaner and KEEP the fat off…

Why Strength Training Is Key:

 

To build muscle, we need to challenge our body to grow stronger.

While you can 100% lose weight without working out by just adjusting your diet, you need the challenge of training to help you build that muscle.

Not to mention a consistent workout routine can make it so much easier to lose fat faster and maintain those results long term.

Working out though isn’t just about burning more calories. And weight training especially improves your hormone levels for easier fat loss and a better body composition. 

Weight training, and increasing muscle mass, can even increase insulin sensitivity for better fat burning benefits and a higher metabolic rate.

And that is why paying attention to your workouts and not just your diet is so key.

Through your strength training, and creating progression in your workouts, you can build lean muscle.

While we often think about creating progression through using heavier loads, progression can also occur by adding in instability, using variations of movements, changes in tempos and even changing up the range of motion you’re performing during movements.

But we need that clear challenge to create the change no matter how we create it.

We can’t just see our workouts as a time to burn more calories, and do MORE, which is why we often turn to cardio.

We have to also recognize that cardio can be catabolic to muscle tissue and, when combined with a calorie deficit for fat loss, can actually lead to us losing more muscle mass over the course of our weight loss journey.

It’s why strength training is so key.

It helps us do what we can to increase lean muscle mass and at least preserve even the muscle we have.

And we want to do everything in our power to preserve our lean muscle mass to make sure the weight we are losing is as much fat as possible to look our leanest.

While, especially if we have more weight to lose, some muscle mass loss will occur, the leaner we get, the more we want to do what we can to avoid more muscle loss than necessary.

Because muscle is metabolically costly.

What this means is it requires more calories to maintain more muscle on your body.

More muscle therefore means a higher metabolic rate and more calories burned at rest.

So if you’re looking to lose more fat faster, you want to retain and even add muscle.

Focusing on strength training to build and retain lean muscle will help you avoid some of the metabolic adaptations that often occur with weight loss and allow you to eat more as you lean down.

Muscle will then make it easier to maintain your weight loss long term not to mention actually LOOK LEANER because you truly will have lost fat in the process!

Now…What Are 5 Tips To Help You Dial In Your Strength Training For Better Fat Loss Results?

#1: Focus on compound moves.

Compound moves or moves that work multiple joints and muscle groups at once allow you to move heavy loads and build lean muscle efficiently.

They are a perfect way to work more areas in less time, which is key if you are trying to create efficient workouts to match your busy schedule.

And while we don’t want our training to just be about burning calories, compound moves will help you burn more calories during your sessions than isolation exercises will.

You are working large muscle groups and more muscles at once, which means your body needs to utilize more energy to perform these lifts.

You may find you get more out of breath and see your heart rate increase more when focusing your workouts on compound movements, especially when you challenge yourself with heavy loads.

Working muscles require increased blood flow to deliver glucose, oxygen and other nutrients to muscles, which will increase your heart rate to match these demands aka you’ll burn more calories.

And not only will you burn more calories during your sessions but these muscles that have been worked during your session will require more energy to support the healing process so they can grow stronger.

Especially if you are in a slight calorie deficit, your body will need to utilize stored energy to fuel the repair and growth!

#2: Avoid body part splits.

You’ll see many bodybuilding splits working very focused areas of the body each session.

This often limits the large muscles you are actually targeting per session and decreases your training frequency for areas over the week.

Especially for stubborn areas, increasing training frequency may be helpful so you can more efficiently build that lean muscle.

This may mean full-body, anterior-posterior or even hemisphere splits may be more beneficial so you can target muscle groups more than once a week easily.

This will also allow you to hit more large muscle groups each and every session to more efficiently build strength and muscle.

Targeting more large muscle groups each and every session also allows you to ultimately create a more anabolic hormonal environment which can also assist you in burning more fat even at rest.

With these harder training sessions that focus on more large muscle groups each and every session you can elevate levels of growth hormone and testosterone and reap their fat burning benefits.

Besides initiating fat burning, growth hormone also facilitates protein synthesis for faster recovery and greater muscular development. 

Testosterone also is key to creating that anabolic environment which not only promotes fats burning but the development of lean mass.

Not to mention, again working those large muscle groups leads to more calories being burned not only during your sessions but even in the follow time as your body repairs and rebuilds!

#3: Use fewer single lift workout designs.

While you don’t want to turn every strength workout into a cardio session or that will fight against your muscle gains, you do want to use the cardio-strength spectrum to your advantage.

While single heavy lifts with longer rest periods can and should be included strategically, especially to build strength, they aren’t necessarily the most efficient for muscle hypertrophy.

Intense heavy lifting sessions with at times shorter rest periods, not no rest periods, can even better optimize those hormone levels.

By using more supersets, trisets and circuit type workout designs, you can allow areas to rest while still working other areas.

This often allows you to work more muscle groups in a shorter time frame and keep your body having to work harder to again, burn more calories to rebuild stronger.

The metabolic element to these sessions can also help you get cardiovascular benefits and stay in great conditioning shape, even improving your lifting.

Plus, by alternating areas worked, you can still get adequate rest to keep using those heavy loads to encourage muscle hypertrophy or growth!

#4: Mix up the tools you use.

Often when we think about building muscle, we think about lifting heavier and getting super sore.

While you may find at times during your fat loss phase, you do get more sore as you are in a slight calorie deficit, you also don’t want to try to make yourself sore after every session.

Soreness isn’t an indicator you worked hard enough. And it isn’t needed to build muscle.

While muscle tissue damage can lead to soreness, it isn’t the only driver of muscle growth either – there is also mechanical tension and metabolic stress.

That is why you want to consider not only adding heavier loads but different types of moves and resistances to your training routine!

Consider a barbell hip thruster but add in a mini band around your legs. Or even test out a double banded variation.

Don’t be afraid to use banded moves that change where and how tension is applied during a movement.

Don’t even avoid including some isolation work that does use bands to create that pump and burn to really target those stubborn areas!

These different tools and different moves help you use all three drivers of muscle growth to get the best results possible and even increase your training frequency over the week.

Not to mention they can make training fun, especially if you are finding your motivation at times fading. It can be fatiguing at times to keep trying to drive to lift more or do another rep.

And that is also why including progression through different tools and even the same but different can give you another way of progressing that mentally may be more fun and motivating!

#5: Do a proper warm up – Don’t skip the activation!

This tip is extremely unsexy but the one so many of us are guilty of doing…Especially when we think about designing workouts for weight loss and we’re short on time.

Our warm up is the first thing to go in our workouts so we can “get to the good stuff” and burn a ton of calories.

But if you want to get the most benefit from every training session and really make sure the correct muscles are working, you don’t want to skip your warm up, especially the activation.

Activation exercises not only create metabolic stress to drive muscle growth, but they can be used to establish that mind-body connection.

Through focused activation of one muscle they do also stretch the opposing muscle group as you go through the movement. A glute bridge, where you focus on those glutes will in turn stretch out those hip flexors!

And the more we are able to FEEL those correct muscles working in our training, the more those muscles are truly benefiting.

That ability to recruit muscles and feel them working, that activation, can improve our muscle hypertrophy.

For example, if you feel only your quads or hamstrings during a weighted glute bridge, your glutes aren’t getting the benefit they should. You want to feel them as the prime mover.

Doing glute activation in your warm up can help you establish that mind-body connection so you can better engage those glutes during your workout.

That way you’re not overloading muscles, which can lead to injury AND you’re also really truly using those muscles correctly so they get the full benefit of the workout lifts you’re including!

SUMMARY:

We want to be intentional with our training to get the best results possible.

The more we can use every tool in our toolbox to get results, the better and faster our results will be.

So if you’re really working to lose fat and have your diet dialed in, don’t ignore how beneficial strength training can be to building that lean, strong physique and even maintaining your results long-term!

Learn more about my 3-Step Recipe For Results…