Lifting Weights to Lose Fat

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"Lifting Weights to Lose Fat"

I once was asked a question that went more or less like this:

"I weigh 186 lb and plan to start lifting weights next week. I will train four days/week, practice martial arts four days/week, and want to try to run three days/week. My goal is to lose roughly 20 lbs. in the next 5-6 weeks. Right now, I'm about 18% body fat. Is this possible while lifting weights? It will be done in mostly circuit style."

Here's what I told the guy:

"Before anything else, get your diet squared away. Losing weight is primarily about burning up more calories than you eat each day. There are other things to consider, but that's the main thing to look at. No matter what you do, you can't outwork a lousy diet.

Next, determine how important your martial arts are to you. You probably could lose more weight if you poured your efforts into training and cardio workouts, but ultimately, your martial arts would suffer, as you'd be more tired and rundown from not having enough calories in your system. You'd be much more susceptible to overtraining and burning out your nervous system.

All that said...

You've got two main options to consider.

First, you'll need to do at least some sort of strength training. Cardio will be ultimately important in trying to lose bodyfat (not to mention helping you with your martial arts), but when you're in a caloric defecit, your body will turn on itself for energy, as you're simply not taking enough enough calories (which is the point).

The problem is that muscle is much easier to break down than fat is, and your body will attack that first. Unless you keep protein intake high and do some strength training, you won't preserve your muscle. You'll lose weight, but it will be muscle - you'll actually retain your fat. That's the worst case scenario.

You'll want to do some conditioning, and there are a few ways you could do this. You could do traditional "distance" cardio by running or on a machine at your gym. However, if you go that route, I'd recommend interval training instead. It's better for fat loss, and doesn't take nearly as long to do. However, it is *much* harder on the nervous system if you do it right (which is very, very intense). Given that you're already doing a fair bit of work and will restricting your calories, this might not be the best idea.

What I would suggest would be to do circuits or complex training instead. Though circuit training got a bad rap in the '80s when people spending way too much time on lousy machines getting lousy results (usually because they were putting in lousy effort), it is a very beneficial style of training.

To make complexes effective, circuit through several compound, multi-joint movements back to back with little to no rest in between. Instead of putting together a bunch of easy, single joint moves like lateral raises and leg extensions, stack presses, rows, cleans, squats, deadlifts, and the like. You'll be using your whole body, will be working your endurance and conditioning, will teach your body the idea of "active rest" (becuase one part of your body will still be working while another part of it will be resting), and will get an overall great cardio workout.

This would likely be a better setup for your martial arts as well - and would let you continue to practice it.

Good workouts could be put together one of two ways.

First, do 2-3 heavy compound movments for strength and power. Choose a push, a pull, and a lower body exercise. Then, follow it up with complexes of 4-6 exercises with light(er) weights and reps in the 8-12 range.

Or, you could combine your strength work into your complexes. Instead of doing the strength work before hand, increase the weight on all the exercises in your complexes, and keep the reps down in the 5-6 range per exercise. Stack together a heavy clean, heavy press, heavy high pull, heavy row, and heavy squat, and you're gonna be sucking some serious wind.

Just be sure that you choose exercises that (more or less) allow you to use similar weights across the board. It can be tough to setup an area with several different bars/benches/weights/whatever so that you can circuit from one to another without either somebody else getting in the way or "stealing" your equipment while you're in another part of the complex.

Hope this helps."

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.

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