Since strength training increases your metabolism, it is an essential component to losing fat and maintaining your ideal weight.  One of the biggest reasons people gain weight is that they lose muscle.  The key to avoiding muscle loss is to strength train. Strength training is the most effective means to create lean muscle mass.  By increasing lean muscle, you’ll burn more calories helping you to lose fat and maintain your ideal weight.

Science confirms that adding lean muscle mass adds to your body’s fat burning arsenal.  For every pound of muscle you gain, you burn an extra 50 calories a day!  Do the math that is an extra 18,250 calories a year.  This translates to an additional 5 pounds of fat lost a year when your body is at rest.

Resistance Training
Strength can be defined as the ability of a muscle or group of muscles to generate force.  Absolute strength is the maximal amount of force that can be generated from one max effort, and dynamic strength is the ability of a muscle to contract repeatedly over time.  They are two components of fitness.  To develop strength, the muscle has to work against resistance.

There are several resistance training systems: traditional training, super set training, pyramid training, breakdown training and slow motion training.

1.  Traditional Training:  Selecting the desired strength type: dynamic, absolute, hypertrophy followed by reps, sets, and rest intervals.

2.  Super-set Training: Exercises performed back to back with little or no rest.

3.  Pyramid Training: There are many variations to this training.  You can begin with a high load decreasing to a light load or begin with a light load increasing to a high load.

4.    Breakdown Training: Start with traditional training for a set to fatigue immediately followed by 2-4 additional repetitions using 10-20% less weight.  On a leg press start with 10 reps at 100 lbs followed immediately by 2-4 additional repetitions using 90 lbs.  Studies have shown 40% greater improvement in strength in an 8-week trail using Breakdown Training compared to traditional resistance.17

5.  Slow Motion Training: The key to this training is tempo.  It is performed using the traditional load but changing the tempo.  For example each repetition would take 14 seconds to perform with 10 seconds being on the concentric phase (when the weight is lifted) and 4 on the eccentric phase (when the weight is lowered) or vice versa.  Studies have shown a 49% greater strength gain with slow motion training compared with traditional strength training.