Training for Fat Reduction and Improved Muscle Tone
As
an introduction to training for fat loss and improved muscular tone, I would
like to share an exert from an article I wrote for my August 2006 newsletter.
The article was entitled 'The Importance of Combining Nutrition and Exercise
for Weight Management (Loss or Gain)' and it opened as follows:
"There are a number of key elements to achieving weight management goals.
The major two are correct nutrition and relevant exercise. Weight loss is
achieved by consuming fewer calories than your body uses and weight gain is
achieved by consuming a greater number of calories than your body uses, but
what role does exercise play?
For weight loss, the primary purpose of exercise is widely assumed to be to
burn calories, but are we able to get greater benefits from our exercise?
The answer to this is YES! The type of training you do can improve your body’s
ability to burn fat. The human body can only burn fat when both carbohydrates
and oxygen are present and so if you are aiming to lose weight, you need to
encourage your body to store carbohydrates (in the muscles) and use oxygen
more effectively. This is an excellent argument for why low carbohydrate diets
are not ideal, because if there are no carbohydrates present in your body,
then lean muscle mass is broken down to replace them.
In order to promote the adaptations I have discussed, enabling your body to
use greater proportions of fat for energy, your cardiovascular exercise should
be done at a relatively high intensity (at lease 70% of your maximum heart
rate - providing you have a reasonable cardiovascular fitness base to begin
with!). This will promote an increase in the number of mitochondria within
the muscles, enabling greater uptake and utilisation of oxygen.
For fat loss, resistance exercises should be done with repetition ranges of
15 and above, as this will improve the endurance capacity of the muscle. The
muscle will once again produce greater numbers of mitochondria in order to
reduce lactic acid production, hence improving the muscles ability to use
oxygen................."
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
||
