The term “lift weights faster” has been flying around on the Internet these days quite a bit and for a good reason. The term has become my favorite thing to say when people ask me how much cardio they need to do. The most efficient way to increase strength, build muscle, burn fat, improve movement, increase bone density, and improve overall quality of life is though increasing your strength capacity. Lifting weights faster adds a fat loss and conditioning component to top it off.
So why does lifting weights faster work so well? Let’s look at some science.
You need to burn fatty acids by doing workouts that have a high metabolic cost and the best way to do that is to add lifting weights faster to your workouts 3-4 days per week. Hormone Sensitive Lipase is crucial for inducing this process because it mobilizes free fatty acids from adipose tissue, releasing nasty fat into the blood stream. Then, carnitine transports the free fatty acids into the mitochondria where they can be burned for energy.
This is the main thing that people are confused about when it comes to exercise and fat loss. You need to produce a tough metabolic cost in order for this process to happen. Jogging, Yoga, and even sports like tennis and volleyball just don’t do this. That doesn’t mean that you can’t participate in those forms of exercise. It just means lifting weights faster will cause more metabolic cost, thus better at burning fat.
What does produce a high metabolic cost is intense exercise, or more specifically, intense exercises or combinations of intense exercises that stimulate all the major muscle groups. This induces the highest metabolic costs possible.
Putting a combination of exercises that last about 20-30 minutes while utilizing a sound strength-training workout is perfect since your energy stores will get low. A good strength training program done fast will help produce great fat loss and it nails the demand for energy at this point in the workout. Remember Hormone Sensitive Lipase? This will be called upon in the adipocytes in order to provide energy.
We typically think of lifting weights as a means to build strength and muscle, which is very true, but it can also produce a lot of fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning benefits.
For the month of December, I challenge you to integrate this routine into your workout program 3-4 days per week on non-consecutive days. Lift weights faster this month, and ward off all the fat gain that you may receive from all of the holiday eating!
For the Circuit Workout: Perform as many reps and rounds as possible in 20-minutes of the exercises below. Add 1 (one) minute each time you perform the workout. If you perform this workout 12 times this month, you will end up with a 32-minute workout.
This article was inspired by Jen Sinkler, who continues to motivate others to get off the treadmill, and instead move some weight for greater fat loss.
