FIVE reasons why you should step off the treadmill and onto the lifting platform!

Weight training should be at the heart of your exercise regime for plenty of reasons, especially if fat loss is your primary goal, here’s why I feel it’s beneficial!

1) The “Afterburner” effect

Probably the biggest reason you should start incorporating more weights into your exercise regime is because of a little something called the Afterburner effect. This literally means what it says, you burn calories after your session has finished, amazing! After a relatively high intensity weight training session (with short rest periods), your body’s metabolism will be working at a faster rate than normal. This means you’ll be burning more calories overall than you would if you did a similar length session on a treadmill.

2) Long term gain

Following on from point 1, there’s a much longer term gain when it comes to lifting weights, you build muscle, which in turn increases your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). This means the amount of calories you’d burn if you were to lay in bed all day without moving a muscle, sounds familiar… Basically this means free calorie burning!

3) Enjoyment

SURELY you’ve got to be lying if you say you actually enjoy running on a treadmill day in, day out. Way too many people think that steady state cardio is essential to losing weight, and that the whole “task” of getting in shape can’t be enjoyable. In my opinion, you should find at least a little bit of enjoyment from exercising! Give weight training a proper go and I think you’ll surprise yourself with your results and how much you actually enjoy it!

4) Progress

Making progress is absolutely essential to keep you motivated, and it’s hard to measure progress on a treadmill. When you’re weight training you can track your workouts in terms of weight/sets/reps and see how you progress over time, which is great for motivation as you can see how far you’ve progressed when you look back at previous workouts!

5)Aesthetics

If two people of similar height & weight were to both lose 30lbs, one of them by just doing cardiovascular work and the other by doing a combination of both cardio & weights. I can guarantee the one who lifted weights will look more ‘toned’ and healthy. In a calorie deficit, without muscle stimulus and adequate protein, your body will break muscle down to use as an energy source. This is definitely not what you want. So make sure you’re incorporating some form of weight training into your exercise regime!

So there’s my five reasons why I feel you should be lifting weights. If you don’t feel confident just yet with weight training, feel free to book in with me for a PT session and I’ll help you get started and answer any questions you may have!

Oliver Portch BSc

Exercise Specialist

Better Body Group Sevenoaks