lifting weights is great for building muscle but not so great for burning calories in this video i'll explain how that affects your ability to build muscle and lose fat and then cover three tweaks that you can make to increase the number of calories you burn during your lifting workouts by the end we're gonna apply this to a full body workout that you can get started with right away first off it's important to understand that exercise alone is not very effective at losing fat if your diet is not under control for example it would take nearly
two hours of running to burn off the calories from a cheeseburger in small fries this isn't very practical but with a proper diet adding the right type of exercise to it can significantly speed up your results illustrating this very well is a 2012 study that took 119 participants and compared the fat loss effects of died in with cardio dieting with resistance training or dieting with both cardio and resistance training each group ate 2 000 calories a day the cardio group went jogging for 45 minutes three times a week the resistance training group lifted weights for
an hour three times a week whereas the last group did both of these throughout the week after several months of this the researchers then analyzed how much bat each group was and this is where it gets really interesting the group that only did resistance training they only lost roughly half a pound of fat the group that only did cardio lost almost five times as much as this whereas a group that did both resistance training and cardio experienced the most fat loss now the reason for these results is that resistance training it just doesn't burn many
calories compared to cardio research has shown that on average lifting weights only burns about two to three calories per minute a simple brisk walk burst more than this this means that a single cardio session can easily burn two to three times as many calories than a traditional resistance training workout does however resistance training did have one important advantage over cardio doing cardio alone led to a small amount of muscle loss whereas resistance training led to almost a 2.5 pound increase in muscle this is important to know because muscle is what's going to help keep your
metabolism high as you lose weight it will help ensure that you end up looking lean and muscular rather than just skinny after your diet this means that for the best fat loss and muscle building results a combination of resistance training with cardio is best but let's face it for most people this is a big commitment and traditional cardio it can be quite unenjoyable another option combine them both into a single high intensity workout a workout that gives the calorie burning efficiency of cardio as well as the muscle building benefits of lifting i'm going to show
you how to do this with three tweaks and then give you an example workout that puts this into practice the first tweak is with how much weight you'll be lifting and how many reps you're gonna be doing in your sets for each exercise a 2011 study analyzed the calories burned during sets of the bench press by having participants either do sets with heavier weights for less reps or lighter weights for more reps the researchers found that participants could nearly double the number of calories they burned in a set by lifting lighter weights for more reps
however although we can burn slightly more calories the lighter in weight that we go there's two scientific findings we need to apply to avoid making the workout less effective at building muscle number one is from a recent 2020 analysis of several studies where researchers tested if you could build the same amount of muscle using either light weights or heavy weights they found that this was in fact possible but only if participants pushed themselves hard enough during their sets to the point where they could only do one or two more reps if they went all out
number two is from a similar paper done just this year which found that although you can build just as much muscle with lighter weights there's a point where the weight becomes too light and less effective for muscle growth because of this for the best muscle building results while still burning significantly more calories a good recommendation is to use a weight that's between 40 to 60 percent of the maximum weight you can lift for that exercise for most people this means choosing a way that you can do around 15 to 30 reps with just remember you
still need to push yourself hard enough for this to be effective tweak number two so this involves using the most muscle masses possible within your workouts this is something we implement into my built with science programs because of the several benefits it provides illustrating this is a 2017 study which tested a variety of resistance training exercises and compared the calories burned they compared several isolation exercises that only worked one small muscle at a time to compound exercises that work several different muscles simultaneously and what they found is actually quite surprising for example lat pull downs
which worked several back muscles as well as the biceps burned almost 20 percent more calories than bicep curls they also found that squats which work the whole lower body burn almost 35 more calories than leg extensions which only work the quads we're going to apply this by filling our workout with big exercises that will work every single muscle of our body finally the most important thing you can do to increase the calorie burn of lifting weights is improve your time efficiency think about it during a 60 minute resistance training workout you don't actually spend much
time working out much of it is spent resting letting your muscles recover before the next step this is great if you're trying to maximize muscle growth and strength but not very helpful for burning calories there is however a way that we can structure our workouts to increase our calorie burn without sacrificing gains a 2011 study showcased just how effective this method can be the researchers took a group of trained men and randomized them into two groups one group performed a traditional resistance training workout that involved three minutes of rest between each set and moving through
each exercise one at a time the other group performed a circuit style training where they perform each exercise one right after the other taking just 30 seconds to transition to the next exercise they then repeated the circuit for the same number of total sets as a traditional group after eight weeks of this the researchers found that both groups experienced similar increases in muscle mass and strength but the circuit training group had a significant decrease in body fat percentage while the traditional training group did not and this occurred even with the workouts on the circuit group
being half the time of the traditional group workouts using this method will enable us to add more exercises and sets into our workout without having to stay in the gym any longer than normal but we will want to be careful with the exercise selection to ensure that we don't compromise our gains by overworking the same muscle groups with not enough rest all right we got the science down now let's apply it into a workout that can be done either at the gym or even at home with just dumbbells the workout includes three circuits that each
have four exercises within each circuit you're going to progress from one exercise to the next resting for only 15 to 20 seconds and for each exercise you're going to pick a weight that you can do somewhere between 15 to 30 reps with if you push really hard if you reach above 30 reps then you know it's time to use a heavier weight finally if you're a beginner perform each circuit two to three times intermediate three to four times and advance four to five times let's now dive into the first circuit so the first circuit is
gonna focus on the upper body and all you're gonna need is a bench and two pairs of dumbbells first start with a flat dumbbell bench press to work the chest and triceps if you don't have a bench these can be just done on the floor once you finish your set using the same pair of dumbbells move on to a bent over dumbbell row to now work your back and biceps pull the dumbbells into your hips not your chest after you finish rows take a quick breather and then grab a second set of dumbbells you want
these to be a little bit lighter we'll use them to perform shoulder presses and we're going to do these standing to slightly boost shoulder muscle activation when compared to the seated version when you're done with this set the dumbbells down i will now focus on working the core with reverse crunches take it slow and feel your abs working every part of the rep after that you've completed one round take 15 to 20 seconds to rest and then repeat for the required number of cycles based on your experience level once you're done with circuit one take
two to three minutes to rest and prepare for circuit 2 to now focus on the lower body first we're going to start with a tough yet very effective exercise for the quads hold the dumbbell at your chest and squat down to at least parallel pace yourself here not going too fast or too slow around rep 15 your legs will be on fire but keep on pushing once you're done grab a pair of dumbbells and will now focus on the hamstrings and glutes with a romanian deadlift lower the dumbbells only as far as you can while
keeping your back flat then use your hamstrings and glutes to pull yourself back up to the starting position after this keeping the same dumbbells will now work the calves no we're not skipping them while standing raise up on your toes as far as you can squeeze hard at the top and then control the weight back down and repeat we'll then finish the circuit off with some core work grab either a 10 or 25 pound plate lie on your back and perform weighted crunches you don't need to sit all the way up just think about trying
to touch your chest towards your belly button once you're done take about 15 to 20 seconds to rest and then it's back to squats when you're all done your required number of circuits take another two to three minutes to rest and get ready for the final circuit so the third and final circuit is going to focus on the full body and all you need is a heavier and lighter pair of dumbbells first we're gonna work the lower body with the heavier dumbbells held by your sides take a step back into a reverse lunge keep your
chest up and push up with the front leg alternate legs each rep after this you're going to drop down for push-ups depending on your experience level you can elevate your hands up on a box to make it easier or elevate your feet to make it harder what's most important is that you're pushing yourself hard and getting no more than 30 reps after this grab your lighter pair of dumbbells and we're now going to focus on the mid back and rear delts bend over then raise your arms into a w position at the top hold this
briefly and then come back down for another rep finally we're almost there we're going to finish the circuit off with the plank squeeze your glutes together and keep your chest and hips parallel to the floor don't worry about reps here just hold it until you get to about an eight or nine out of ten difficulty just like the last two circuits cycle through these exercises two to five times depending on your experience level after that give yourself a much needed pad on the back and congratulate yourself for hopefully making it through so you're gonna get
the most benefit from this workout if you implement it no less than two but no more than four times a week that being said i wouldn't use the style of workout if your main goal is to build muscle and improve your strength i have other workouts on my channel that are much better suited for that and for those who are looking for an all-in-one step-by-step program that's personalized specifically for your body and your fitness goals you can take a free quiz over at buildwithscience.com and we'll determine which of our programs is right for you anyways
thank you so much for watching you can click here to watch some of my other videos and i'll see you next time
