When you intiate any strength training program you may see large gains in muscular strength but little or no changes in muscle size or definition. 

The reason for this is that during the first 6-8 weeks of the program your body is adapting to and learning movements and how much strength is needed to perform those movements. 

The body is adapting by creating more neuromuscular connections.  This where nerve fibers are connecting to already existing muscle fibers.  As more connections are made, the more muscle fibers are being used.  the more muscle fibers used, the stronger a muscle becomes. 

 After this initial “learning stage” of 6-8 weeks, strength comes as a result of either an increase in muscle size (hypertrophy) or number of muscle fibers (hyperplasia).

If you want to gain strength past the intial stage, you will want to follow a specific training program that pays attention to exercise selection, order, sets, repetitions, and rest intervals. 

Just don’t be discouraged if your strength gains begin to plateau after 2 or 3 months of training.  Your body has learned the movements, now it needs a stronger stimulus to grow.

I cannot recall how many someone has asked me this question. 

It all depends on what your goal is. 

If you are looking to improve your cardiovascular endurance, do that first.  If you want to increase your muscle strength, lift weights first.

Follow the principle of specificity.  When your body is fueled up and fresh, do the activity you want to improve first, that way you can devote the highest level of effort and concentration.

If you are more concerned with weight loss the answer is a bit more complicated.  Weight lifting requires a more concentration and effort than cardio.  It is best to do the activity that is more complex at the beginning. 

If you do cardio first, you won’t be able to put forth the calorie burning effort to get the most from weight training.

If fat loss is your goal, then the same order applies to you too.  The body burns carbohydrate more quickly and easily than fat and more carbohydrate is used to fuel intense activities like weight training. 

It also takes time for you to start burning more calories from fat which is why cardio is so important to any fat loss program.  By weight training first you will use up a lot of your carbohydrate stores and you body will need to rely more on fat to give you calories to use during your cardio.

If your weight lifting program is not very intense then the order is not as important as the amount of effort you put into both cardio and lifting. 

So which is better for fat loss, long duration, low intensity cardio, or high intensity interval training?  We’ll talk about that next time.

Bulky Women (part 2) 

The second important thing you need to build muscle is the proper training program.

The program needs to be intense enough to overload your muscular system and signal your body to start building more muscle.  Remember that you also have to be eating enough calories too. And we are talking about a lot of calories.

The training programs used for muscle growth (hypertrophy) use high intensity and high volume weight lifting.  The way to overload muscle is to make it lift more weight than it’s used to.  Body builders are sometimes jokingly referred to as “gym rats” because they spend so much time there.  It’s not because they can’t find anywhere else to hang out, it’s because they have to do so many sets and repetitions and include enough rest between those sets. 

Some bodybuilders even train multiple times during the day for hours at a time. 

Most of us can’t afford to spend the time most bodybuilders need to spend shaping their bodies. 

I’ll discuss the third component to building muscle in the next post so keep a lookout.

Can women get bulky?

The answer is yes, but not as easily as most people think.

I have some individuals (women mainly) tell me all the time that they want to tone up their muscles with weight training, but they don’t want to get bulky.

What most people don’t realize is how hard it is for anyone to gain lean muscle, even guys. Successful body builders, either male or female must adhere to strict diets in order to gain the maximum amount of lean muscle, and they spend a lot of time lifting weights and doing cardio in order to create the specific look they want. In some cases, bodybuilders use androgenic steroids or other supplements to enhance muscle gain.

Building muscles requires three important things.

First, you must eat more calories than you are burning on a consistent, daily basis.

Bodybuilders eat a lot, I MEAN A LOT!

To gain muscle you would need to increase the amount of calories you eat by 500 or more per day depending on how big you want to get.

Any weight gain will always include both lean weight (which is muscle, bone, water and other stuff) and fat. If you are burning a lot of calories with exercise and you keep your caloric intake the same, then you will actually lose weight.

The take home point here is that if you don’t want to build big muscles, don’t eat more than what your body can use. Regardless of how heavy you lift weights, if your caloric intake remains the same or decreases, then you are not going to build any more muscle. Your muscles will repair themselves and you will get stronger, but not by building muscle.

From my previous post you now know that muscles are major calorie burners. 

Think about it.  Any time you move, that movement requires energy, and energy comes from calories.

The key to weight loss of any kind is to create a situation where your body is in negative energy balance.  What I mean by this is that in order to maintain a consistent body weight you have to balance your energy consumption and expenditure by burning just as many calories as you eat on a regular basis. 

Your body weight will always fluctuate throughout the whenever you eat or drink anything, and also whenever you exercise and as stuff leaves and enters the body.

So for weight loss, you need to burn more calories throughout the day than you take in.  Your body is always using calories to keep you alive, and anything you do to burn more calories will help put you in negative energy balance as long as you aren’t eating more than usual.

Cardio burns calories, we have established that, but weight training does too.  Maybe not quite as may as cardio during the actual workout session, but the cool thing is that weight lifting causes more muscle damage than cardio.  So even after your workout is over, the body has to use energy to repair that muscle which leads to more calories burned post-exercise.

So is cardio more important than weight lifting?  The answer is no, they are both important in addition to a diet that limits caloric intake. 

I said before that any weight loss will result is loss of muscle and fat, but weight training will help you keep more muscle and focus the emphasis on fat loss, which more important than just weight loss.  If you are a little confused by that last statement, I’ll go into more detail in my next post.

One of my clients just recently brought in an article she found on the internet explaining that cardio is more important than weight lifting for weight loss. 

Not True. Both are important

Muscles burn calories and the more active your muscles are, the more calories you are going burn.

Both cardio training and weight lifting both use muscle, but in different ways and with different types of muscle, better yet muscle fibers.

Real quick background.  There are 3 basic muscle fiber types in your body: slow twitch, fast twitch type A and fast twitch type B.

Some muscles can contain a majority of either one of these three, but the type of activity you are doing will dictate which type of fiber is used.

Cardio uses mainly slow twitch muscle fibers which are better at using oxygen to metabolize fat and carbohydrate (glucose) for energy.  The limitation with these fibers is that they are not good at generating a lot of muscle force.  But they are really good at contracting continuously.  So any aerobic activity like running, cycling, swimming, etc. will use mainly slow twitch fibers. 

So far you would think that this would be exactly what you want for weight loss and it will help, but we have to look at the big picture.    In my next post we will take a look at energy balance and how muscle can help tip the scale.