Kaypeeoh.
With all due respect if you feel like you are not working out hard when lifting weights then you are not working out hard enough...it's that simple.

Weight lifting when done intensley..moderately heavy/heavy weights with short rest periods.using compound movements will produce more GH than the Treadmill ever will. Plus it will give you ten times the results and faster. And you'll burn fat long after you work out!

Give me 20 minutes with you and I guarentee.. you will feel you are working hard!

I couldnt agree more.

I have done a lot of aerobic workouts over the years, including some triathlons, hours and hours in pools, on treadmills, on bikes, etc. Nothing was ever as intense as the 20 minutes Mr. Fred Hahn puts me thru on the weights. Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

Here's how it goes. You load up the weights to the point that you can just barely move them, maybe a bit less. You proceed to push them for 60 to 90 seconds. Those last 10 - 15 seconds are murder. You gotta be motivated to get thru that. It burns, it hurts, but you can still move the weights so you keep going. It burns even more. you are sucking wind like a bastard. You keep pusing it. Finally you get to the point that you just cant move any more. Sweet blessed relief. Ok, that's one exercise, now lets to 7 or 8 more...

Weight training is the best way to maintain long term body composition goals. With a well planned routine, you don't need to "feel" like you had a good workout for it to be productive as well. All a person needs is a reasonably planned out cycle of progression, followed by a "break/deload", and back to a progression. The calories burned in weight lifting are secondary to the numerous benifits in health and body comp it provides and traditional cardio does not. I highly suggest you use weights, especially if you want growth hormone to be released. Cardio is a joke in this regard compared to a solid lifting program.

Cheers!

I use a 24hour fitness gym, mainly for the treadmills on cold days. Once weekly I do about an hour on the machines and free hand weight. I start with an ab crunch machine. It only goes up to 200 pounds, I think. I do five sets of 50. After each set I move over to a back machine. I forget what the maximum is but I do 5 sets of 50. From there I go to a machine that works the thighs. It's popular with women, who assume they can spot-reduce their thighs. I use it to stretch my adductors; inner thigh muscles.

Then to a rowing machine where I do 5 sets of 30, using 150 pounds. Then I take 25 pound hand weights and do five sets of 25 vertical presses. As I'm working my left arm, my left leg is off the ground so that I'm balancing body weight on my right leg. Then I take a 150 pound barbell for shoulder shrugs, 5 sets of 20. Throughout the hour, in between sets I'll do situps on an incline board, anywhere from 20 to 50 reps. Also between sets I'm stretching my legs a lot.

The day after the workout some of my muscles are a bit sore, but not a lot.

ay yay yay..why are you doing so many reps??

Kaypeeoh, don't believe that crap that high reps are good for "toning".. I hate that word..

Look cut your reps between 6-12, increase the weight and reduce the rest periods..gently force the heart to do more work

doing very high reps and using light weights will only work your slow twitch fibers, just like any aerobics exercise. That's all well and good, but your not working the fast twitchers, and why should they be left out? You'd get a lot stronger in a hurry if you just did one set for each exercise, and set the weights so that you reach failure in about 90 seconds, no matter how many reps that takes. When the weights are heavy enough and you train to failure, you can be sure you've worked all of your fibers....

Most people can benifit from doing varied rep ranges. 3-6, 6-9, 9-15 even. Everyone responds to rep ranges differently and grows differently. Find a program that incorporates this whether the reps change daily or weekly or whatever.

I workout at home and I would like 20 minutes with you showing me how to get the best out of my weight training. I would like to get a book or dvd to help me. Do you know any that I can get? I'm only lifting light weight and would like to lift more to get my weight down faster. Can you help?

For abs, I'm using the maximum weights on the shiny machines. I'll look for other ab exercises that I can 'max out' in 6 or 8 reps. Maybe using the incline board while holding plate weights? The rowing machine goes up to 300 pounds. I'm worried that I might tear a muscle using serious weights--I've done it before.

I have been working out doing Tae Bo for the last 2 months & find mysel more hungry. I know a big part of TB is cardio & I'm finding that though my muscles are stronger, I'm not losing weight. Should I add weight training to this 1-2 times per week?

The AHA promotes walking because its the easiest activity - especially for those that are about to keel over from heart disease - they're the target demographic. Those that are so sedentary, that a trip to the fridge gets them short of breath. Walking is great for you. Running is great. Weights are better. A mixture of the two with emphasis on weights is the best. Why? More bang for your buck in weights and the cardio is great for increasing indurance and cardiovascular health. In a 90 minute workout, I typically would do a 60 min weights and 30 minute cardio split. I lost 30 lbs in 2 months that way and by eating right of course. However, I believe what you put in your body has a lot more to do with losing weight. Converting fat to muscle and gaining muscle mass is so very important. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. That's another reason you get more bang for your buck with weights

A link to the article or site where this guy says this would be nice, it would be cool to see the scientific evidence that he is using to support this.

It would also be interesting to see the eating pattern of the people that lost the muscle, were they getting enough fat and protein in their diets.

In my experience, many overweight people choose weight lifting over cardio because it is easier to do at first, and they make up a million excuses why it is better, yet months later, they are still fat, with perhaps more muscle trapped under it.

But, usually the people I have seen that take up cardio lose the weight, and become thinner, but this could simple be because those that are willing to choose the initially more difficult path, are the ones that are a bit more serious about weight loss.

In the end it is about personal choice in what you like and what you believe in.
For me though, at the end of the day, I would rather be able to go out and run up several flights of stairs, or play soccor with my kids without losing my breath, than to bench press twice my weight, but finding some balance between the two might be cool too.

But that is just my preference.

I think it has to do with the heart rate while exercising. At a walk, you're burning mostly fat. At a sprint, you're burning mostly sugar. Most people go jogging and are able to maintain a converation while jogging. That's still fat-burning, just as walking is.

You can burn fat while jogging or walking.. You need to jog about 35 miles to burn one pound of fat. But if you are continuing to eat too much food you are replenishing the fat as fast as you remove it.

HIIT burns the most fat in the shortest time. HIIT produces a lot of Growth Hormone which affects the body in a way similar to steroids. Also HIIT drives the blood sugar quite low. The body races to replenish it with gluconeogenesis plus fatty acid breakdown. This process lasts several hours so that fat loss continues long after the workout is over.

I've never understood how lifting weights could cause weight loss. I don't disbelieve it. I just don't see iron pumpers at the gym getting leaner. They get bigger pecs and whatever but still have that rind of fat covering everything.

I don't think anyone has said weight lifting alone causes weight loss. Even the weight lifting proponents will agree that weight loss is primarily about diet, not exercise.

Judging the value of lifting weights by the iron pumpers at the gym isn't valid. Anecdotal evidence for a theory is rarely useful. Meatgood thinks runners are thinner than weight lifters. I run with a club in suburbia, with lots of women in their 30s, 40s, & 50s. Many of them are still fat and then head to Starbucks for a coffee & danish after the run. And then I see the few women that pump serious iron in the gym. They are small and strong.

Now which exercise is better?

Ghostryder and Mrfreddy both make the point that heavy lifting stimulates the fast twitch muscle fibers. That seems counter intuitive. You're all saying super weights stimulate fast twitch fibers to grow, making you bigger. Heavier muscles should slow you down.

I can surmise that that type of workout, done regularly, makes the body pump out a lot of various hormones to help rebuild the affected muscles. I never looked at it that way but it sorta makes sense. Olympic sprinters have body-builder thighs. Olympic hurdlers have similar development of thighs and shoulders. Muscles respond to the loads forced on them. Runners have muscles that endure because that's the load put on them. Endurance doesn't need hypertrophy. If anything, excess muscle mass means more stress to do a job where less hypertrophy could do it as well.

For my needs, I run a lot of mountain races: Leadville, Berthoud Pass, Pikes Peak. I want muscle mass for climbing steep hills at altitude. Ghostryder discussed a HIIT leg workout that sounds brutal. I may give it a try.

Once again, I learned something on this web.