Why focus on building muscle?

Now that we know that the best way to lose weight is to focus on the activities that burn 60% of our daily Calorie burn, what does that have to do with strength training? You may recall from the last post that part of this 60% includes all the little things happening in our bodies at a cellular level...like repairing damaged tissues.

First, let me just point out that, the first thing that happens when strength training is the actual burning of Calories in the gym. Remember, that would fall into that 10% that we talked about last week. So, let us not just ignore that fact as it is significant. It shows us that strength training augments our Calories usage in more than one way, making it that much more valuable for our purposes here.

The next thing to know about strength training is the fact that, from a metabolic point of view, muscle is more "expensive" to maintain than fat. When we talk about all the little cellular functions that require energy to keep the body going, it take more energy for the body to keep it's muscle fibers healthy than it does to keep fat hanging around. Fat is easier to convert into energy, so the body will usually go there first when it needs more energy.

Therefore, having more muscle will burn more Calories. Think of it this way, muscle burns Calories merely be existing. If that is the case, more muscle will burn even more Calories merely be existing. This is now a second reason to build more muscle through strength training.

One of the interesting functions of the human body is adaptation. What this means is, you introduce some sort of stimulus to the body (trying to lift heavy weights, for example) and the body will then attempt to adapt to make it so that it can better handle this stimulus in the future (by building more muscle in this case).

Think about why we get vaccinations. We are introducing something into the body in order to prompt the body to develop (a.k.a. "adapt") a way to respond to that something so that it does not cause you to get sick or contract some sort of disease. We "teach" our bodies to fight of diseases by introducing small amounts of that disease and allowing the body to adapt. Lifting heavy weights to build muscle works largely on that same principle.

The last reason I will be sharing is one that I hadn't even thought of until I had thought about the others I have already mentioned. When I realized it, I've got to tell you, I got pretty excited. Yes. I'm a bit of a geek. So what!

Remember when we talked about how much of the 60% of daily Calorie burn comes from things going on at the cellular level? Remember the example I used of "repairing damaged tissue?" I don't know why that didn't immediately dawn on me, but think about this... when you use heavy resistance (heavy weights) to train, what you are actually doing is creating lots of tiny micro-tears of your muscle fibers.

Once this damage is done to the muscle fibers, the body will then attempt to repair the muscle tissue. This requires energy. Removing the damaged cells and then generating new muscle fiber cells to replace them takes energy. And, remember, the body does not merely replace the damaged cells that it removes. It also creates additional muscle cells, making the muscles larger, in order to adapt to the fact that your body wants to better handle lifting that heavy weight the next time.

This is why we continue to add weight to the bar. We are forcing the body to continue to adapt to lifting heavier and heavier weight, forcing it to build more new muscle fiber cells, making the muscles bigger, stronger and more capable of lifting increasingly heavy weight. All this activity takes a lot of energy!

To quickly recap, the reasons to build muscle through strength training in order to lose fat are; strength training burns Calories, muscle burns more calories than fat simply by existing, and the process of repairing the damaged muscle fibers as a result of strength training burns a significant amount of Calories!

Throughout this article and last week's, we focused on one scenario for people going to the gym this New Year, that is losing weight. These same principles apply to "get in shape" or "tone up" or any of the other phrases that ultimately mean the same thing. I realize I did not specifically cover the goal of "wanting to build muscle" because, well, that just seemed a bit obvious.

I hope this has helped you and empowered you with better understanding of why strength training should be the foundation of anything you do in the gym to "get in shape." Armed with this information, when you work with your personal trainer (if it doesn't happen to be me), you can ensure that strength training is incorporated into your program and you're not just doing burpees and battle ropes every day. Not that there's anything wrong with burpees or battle ropes.

Here's to getting stronger!