Most girls seem to think aerobic exercise is the best way to burn calories and improve their cardiovascular fitness, which is why so many girls use treadmills and cross trainers down the gym, but they would actually burn off way more calories and get a better cardio workout from strength training, and they would get a more toned body, which is what most girls want, right?
Anaerobic exercise burns calories faster and increases excess post exercise oxygen consumption. So you burn up calories at a higher rate during and after training than you do after aerobic exercise but that doesn’t matter so much because you burn off even more calories in the day just resting. Strength training increases your base metabolic rate because it increases muscle mass. Every extra lbs of muscle burns off another 50 calories a day during rest. But aerobic exercise is catabolic, which burns muscle.
Some people seem to think that strength training isn’t good cardio exercise but that’s crap too. I do four 20 mins to 30 mins strength training sessions a week and they give me a great cardio workout because I have very little rest in-between sets or exercises. I do a five minute warm up with two 1kg bottles of water. I use them like clubbells.
I do keg training for my first session of the week. It’s great for power, functional strength and core stability. All you need for keg training is a keg and some water. Simple! One litre equals one kg. My second session I do sledge hammer training. I hit against a tire on the floor and a tire hanging up on a chain. The tire absorbs the shock, so it’s easy on the joints but it’s a real freaking killer. It’s great for explosive power and your core though.
My third training session I do sand bag or tire training, which is great fun because you can throw them about without worrying about getting hurt. They’re really cheap too. I do loads of wrestling bodylocks, lifts, supleses and tackles with them.
My final session I used to do kettlebells, but now I do stone lifting. Basque stones are great but they’re hard to get hold, sometimes I just use natural rocks for a real cave girl workout. I don’t go for weight, I go for reps to improve my muscular endurance.
Cave girl workout
You don’t do any running, no?
@ heather
Nah, used to but there are better things to do.
@Amica ” you burn off even more calories in the day just resting.”
I love this routine. I can lose weight sitting on my ass.
I knew exercise was a waste of time.
@ amica I love the sledge hammer training, great stuff and fun. Muscle burns more calories than fat.
dot dot dash dash message to jenny: being a fat arse is not exercise, when your waist is larger than your IQ you have a problem.
Being serious jenny: the Models all exercise and watch thier diets, they are not born slim and trim it is just work. The Fast 5 Diet is free online, you only eat food from 5PM to 10PM and water in the daytime. It is a restricted calories diet and should work for you jenny. You can eat anything from 5PM to 10PM.
@ Mike
My Dad laughs when he sees me doing that cos he used to work in demolitions and he used to smash walls with sledge hammers. Rob’s used to work on a site too. He used to be a hod carrier when he was 16. We do tire training and log lifting as well, and climbing up a chain or rope. Much better than weights.
@ amica: I worked with a sledge hammer on my first job. Breaking stuff was fun but at the end of the first day lifting your arms hurt!
I’m impressed to read about someone understanding the difference between muscular strength vs muscular endurance without confusing it with aerobic capacity.
Nice job
Rick
Forgot to subscribe to comments
There’s a reason why women are told to do aerobic training – and men, too, now – they help the gyms gain pounds, as in £££££s.
@ rezbi
Exactly!!!
I was a panel beater then.
I’m surprised, nobody mentions squats, or deadlifts, or bench presses? Sure this is great, it’s obviously a compound workout, but I know the range of weights they sell sledgehammers in is pretty limited, so there’s not a lot of room to go up in weight and continue to improve. So you get to a point where that hammer gets easy to throw around, and you have to do more reps/sets to get the same level of exhaustion, which isn’t building any more muscle, it’s just fatiguing the muscle you have.
I really applaud you amica, for being one of the only women I’ve met who actually advocate working out as a way to get in shape for women (who’d known, rite?). But please add squats in there. They work the most muscle groups at once out of any work out, work out the biggest muscles in the human body, increases the heart rate better for more calorie burning, gives you more usable strength, and for men boosts testosterone production for muscle recovery. And for our women out there: Yes I said the T word. No, it doesn’t mean you’re going to turn into she-hulk if you do squats. You women couldn’t turn into she-hulk even if you TRIED AS HARD AS YOU CAN, unless you started taking some sort of test supplement. Us MEN have a hard time doing it even while lifting more than you and shoveling protein down our throats all day.
Really, PLEASE add SQUATZ and DEADLIFTS to your routine. All you need are those sandbags to do them. Pick up any weightlifting book if you don’t believe me. ON BEHALF OF MEN EVERYWHERE, nothing is sexier than a woman with those thin, powerful legs and that tight, round, well-defined butt. DO IT.