Fat Women Lift Light Weights.

(O.K. Maybe the title is a little bit of an exaggeration and maybe somewhat gender insensitive, but Laura dared me to do it! LOL)

In my career as trainer and coach for over a decade now I probably would say I have had over a thousand women ask me the age old question. "How do I loose my stomach fat?" Somewhere along the way I have become a little jaded with my answer, these days I simply say "eat a little less train a little heavier." Please notice I say heavier and not more, we will come back to this point. But no matter how I say to a woman that lifting heavier weights is a preferred method for fat loss they always, and I mean always say "but I don't want to get any bulky muscle". What I hope to explore in this post is the thought process behind this myth.

Somewhere a long the way the general public perception of weight training has formed to be if you want to get strong and big you lift heavy with low to moderate reps and if you want to loose weight you train light at high reps and probably in a circuit. Now I am not saying this is wrong but it's more of a half truth then good information.

The truth really comes down to only a few factors.

First, when you lift for power, which is debatable at a total reps lower than 8 reps probably closer to 2-6 it has the highest metabolic demand. What I mean by this is if you had to pick one type of training which would have the best results on resting metabolic rate, calorie consumption and fat burning research really points to this area of time under tension much below 30 seconds. The latest research and theory on why could be a whole article on its own. But lets just assume you are with me so far.

Secondly, and closely related to the first point is that you want to pick exercises that hit a lot of major muscle groups in one exercise. These movements are called compound. Generally, compound lifting is the safest and most commonly practiced when performing heavier lifting. One of the main additional benefits to this style of lifting besides the previously mentioned is that it reduces training time. I like to refer to this as training economy. This becomes especially important with busy adult clients who if they are lucky have maybe three hours of training time available a week.

Another really important factor to the benefits of compound lifting is that generally almost all exercises in this category (when done correctly) engage trunk and leg muscles (core) and do very little single joint isolation. If you wanted to create rounder bulky muscle tissue your best bet are exercises that isolate a few muscles around one or two basic joint movements with a rep range of around 10 reps or higher with sub maximal resistance. I don't want to get too scientific in these articles but this is a very important myth buster based on real science and not made up fitness crappy salesmanship like muscle confusion, (thanks p90x). There is two types of muscle hypertrophy; sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar. With out getting to wordy sarcoplasmic is the common bodybuilding style and I would also like to say in most ways a real waist of space. Myofibrillar is the kind that weight llifters, sprinters and other power athletes would get. Very strong and in most cases not much larger than its weaker predecessors. If you don't believe me check it out right on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_hypertrophy

A final thought on the low reps versus high reps debate. We do train our athletes and weight loss clients at high reps and in circuits. But most of the time we are either training to increase the clients stamina or using high rep movements to elicit a cardiovascular demand. Meaning we are doing even less than what would be considered a good sub maximal load for muscle growth, but enough to get a cardiovascular response. This is generally the only reason you would see us train high reps.

I used to let people believe that there was some truth in this huge misconception, mostly because its a really hard thought process to change (especially in women). But if people are wrong and the science and empirical evidence proves this, why are we still stuck with this dated perception? Unfortunately, in most cases people attribute working hard as it's going to work. Meaning if I do a crap load of lunges terribly wrong, with no real thought process but I feel like its working and I cant get off the toilet in the morning than I must be getting somewhere. Also I would say that most people know some perfect specimen of a human being who trained that way and looks great. I promise you that 99.99% of those people could probably never train at all and live off of a diet of lard and sugar and still look great. Good genetics never proves a particular program is effective. And why would someone really want to work hard if they are getting a lot of praise and their status as fitness goddess is enshrined with almost no effort. I'm telling you right now I don't think I would appreciate a heavy deadlift in the same way. Then there are those people who are genetically predisposed to put on muscle fast. These people could stare at a weight hard enough and grow muscle. This is when compound lifting at low reps with the total amount of training (volume) should stay low. Also, I think people have a tendency to be intimidated of heavy weight and compound lifting. There is definitely something about that guy in the corner of you local fitness centre doing heavy 1/4 back squats, grunting, swearing and in almost every way doing things completely wrong that has damaged the general publics' ability to see true lifting for what it is.

But still I implore everyone our there, help liberate your fellow humans from this huge lie. If you see that lady at the gym curling those cute little pink 3 ibs dumbells tell her that she is doing a great job at either bulking up or just going through the motions. I take no responsibility for her response no matter how right you are.

Kalos Sthenos for all!

Look for my next article about men with big biceps, slow brains and small.... egos.

TJ Johnston