FAT BURNING AND WEIGHT TRAINING
Baltimore Fitness
Adding weight training into your normal exercise routine can help burn even more unwanted fat. Two significant reasons for this increase in fat burning as a result of weight training have to do with 1) muscle fibers and 2) metabolism.
Muscle fibers are the basic elements of your muscles. There are three (3) types of muscle fibers:
1.Slow twitch (slow oxidizing or Type I): Slow twitch muscle fibers get most of their energy from fat burning, a process that requires oxygen. This is also fueled by the muscle fibers' ample supply of blood vessels, glycogen, mitochondria (cellular furnaces where fat and nutrients are burned), and the blood fats inside of various related cells.
2. Fast twitch (fast oxidative – glycolyme or Type IIA): Fast twitch muscle fibers contract quickly, but sustain some endurance. This may be because they have more mitochondria than pure fast twitch fibers, but less mitochondria than slow twitch fibers. A very interesting benefit of high intensity training (HIT) is that you can change pure fast twitch fibers into regular fast twitch oxidative fibers. This type of high intensity training increases the amount of mitochondria in the fast twitch fibers to levels higher than those found in slow twitch fibers. With more mitochondria found in the cells, more fat is burned.
3.Pure fast twitch (Type IIB): These muscle fibers contract more quickly and fatigue faster than the other fibers. Pure fast twitch muscle fibers get their energy from burning glycogen. There are fewer mitochondria in the cells of these fibers, therefore these fibers burn less fat than slow twitch fibers.
