Study: Strength training burns body fat

For years the experts have said that strength training is an important component of weight loss—moreover in changing body composition and burning fat—for both men and women.

A recent article in the IDEA Fitness Journal by Lawrence Herrera and Len Kravitz, PhD, highlights an interesting study done by IDEA Health & Fitness Association that may in fact prove that weight training is indeed fat burning exercise.

We know that muscle contributes significantly to resting metabolic rate, which is the energy expended to maintain all bodily functions at rest—in other words, muscle uses energy as it is active tissue).

We also know that a guiding principle of weight management is the attainment and maintenance of a “negative” energy balance (i.e., burning more calories than are stored) over extended periods of time. However, what physiological function does weight training actually provide to fat metabolism during and immediately following an exercise session?

Surprisingly, this investigation (led by Ormsbee and colleagues and originally reported in the Journal of Applied Physiology) is the first study to examine the specific effects of resistance exercise on adipose-tissue fat metabolism. This research team also examined the extent to which the body uses fat as a fuel during and after a resistance workout.

There are some very practical and important findings from this original
Investigation, according to IDEA:                                                                                                                                                                                               

• First, energy expenditure was elevated for 40 minutes after the resistance training workout and was approximately 10.5% higher than during the corresponding 40 minutes on the control day. This means more calories were being burned after the weight-training bout.
• Second, and perhaps more meaningfully, data indicated that glycerol levels (the marker for lipolysis, or fat breakdown) were raised 78% during and 75% after the resistance training workout as compared with their levels during corresponding times on the control day.

“This study is the first to show directly that resistance exercise increases adipose-tissue lipolysis and thus helps to improve body composition,” say Herrera and Kravitz in the article. “This boost in lipolysis is apparently due to the excitatory effect of resistance training on specific hormones (e.g., epinephrine, norepinephrine and growth hormone). As this study design was completed with trained male subjects, it is hoped that the methods and procedures will be completed with other subject populations (e.g., females, untrained persons, youth, seniors, overweight, etc.) in future research.”

The take: It has been a long held "fact" that strength training is a key (if not THE key) to losing fat and maintaining a healthy body composition ratio (among its other benefits), studies like this can only make it easier for getting people into the shape they desire when they walked into the health club the first day.

Photo: Mike Baird