Weight Training Burns More Calories Than Cardio

Our Planet Woman Fitness gym locations in Merritt and Kamloops recommend adding a weight training component to your exercise routine. If you check out other posts on our blog, you will see that we talk about this often! We want to help you achieve your goals and learn all you can about fitness. We love all forms of exercise, but we've learned that some exercises are better than others at burning calories. At Planet Woman, we believe that weight training is the most effective way to burn calories and stay in shape.

Weight training is one of a few ways you can lose weight. Before we explain how it's the best, let's look at the other two common calorie burning exercises we're comparing to. First is cardio. Cardio can be anything that gets you moving, gets your heart pumping faster for an extended period of time, and gets you sweating. Cardio can include things like jogging, aerobics routines, zumba, hiking, or swimming. These activities often don't even require a gym! You can do them almost anywhere. The second type of exercise we'll mention is high intensity interval training (HIIT). This is a cardio exercise that is more intense than regular cardio. It combines short periods of intense aerobic exercise with less intense recovery periods. Cardio and HIIT are both fun ways to burn calories. The human body is designed to do light cardio for long periods time – so it's natural to like cardio! So why doesn't cardio help everyone lose weight?

One of the reasons cardio isn't the most effective way to lose weight is that it only burns calories during your working out – not after. Once you stop jogging, you stop burning calories! High Intensity training is better, but in our experience it's not much better. After you exercise, your body needs to "cool down". During this cool down time, your metabolism is still burning calories. This effect is called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, or EPOC. Your typical, daily cardio or HIIT routine doesn't generate a large EPOC. Running a marathon would, but most people don't run marathons 3 times a week! After a normal exercise routine, your body is able to cool down within a couple of hours and get back to normal.

Weight training, or any kind of resistance training, generates a greater EPOC effect than other exercise routines. This is why it is the most effective. After an intense weight training routine, your body's metabolism will be higher for much longer. This means that instead of needing to go for both a morning and an evening jog in order to use more calories than you eat, you can do one exercise routine with weights and be burning calories while you're catching up on your favourite TV series – or even while you sleep. The effects of weight training last much longer than a jog – if your goal is to burn calories.

This is why Planet Woman advocates for adding weights or resistance training to your routine. We understand that there are some concerns about starting. You can read our article about 5 Myths about Women and Weights if you need some help convincing yourself, or you can sign up with one of our skilled trainers. They will help you feel great lifting weights, as well as helping you achieve your fitness goals!