Why you need to lift weights even if you just want to “tone”

You’d think as a trainer I would like lifting weights, but I don’t anymore and haven’t for 8 years. I used to lift 6 days a week, 2 hours a day, for 7 years (more on that in the “about” page) - trust me, no one needs to do that. At this point, I lift as infrequently and efficiently as I can only cause I know how and why it helps. That leaves me at 2-3x a week, full body, for about 30-45 minutes max.

Define Lifting

Don’t think of lifting as this hyper-masculine activity that requires pre workout, a bag of chalk, and childhood trauma. Think of it as a different stimulus for fatigue.

Cardio is generally low intensity, rhythmic movement that doesn’t fatigue your muscles for 30-120 minutes. Lifting is anything on the other end of the spectrum, an activity that leverages weights/bands/speed or other pieces of equipment to fatigue your muscles in 10-30 seconds (per set). Under 30 seconds doesn’t sound too bad does it?

Why does the timing matter? Well that’s what your body knows. It has no idea what you’re doing, it just knows how hard and how long you’re doing it for and each intensity and duration has different physiological responses in your body. Those different responses are why you need to lift weights even if you think you don’t.

You exercise for primarily two reasons: to look better, feel better, or both. Let’s explore how lifting plays a role in each.

Looking Better

If your goal is to have a “lean” or “toned” look, you probably think lifting weights is going to make you bulk up. Let’s dispel that concern immediately: putting on muscle isn’t that easy.

Client facing former high school athletes spend 2 hours a day, 6 days a week, taking creatine, drinking gallons of water, and eating everything in sight and still have trouble doing it.

If you’re a 20-something year old girl or guy struggling to make it to the gym for 45 minutes, 3x a week and you have sweetgreen for lunch, trust me you’re not going to bulk up.

So why is it necessary for looks? A few reasons:

• Metabolism

  • Short term: think of every little muscle in your body as a canister of carbs (muscle glycogen). If you empty those canisters frequently, you’ll keep your metabolism strong and the carbs you consume will have a productive use - they’ll fill those canisters back up instead of being converted and then stored as fat (what happens when you eat more carbs than can be stored as muscle glycogen).

  • Long term: having more lean body mass, that you use frequently, keeps your baseline metabolism higher, making the inevitable errors in your diet less detrimental.

• Shape

  • 3 types of tissue give your body it’s silhouette: bone, muscle, and fat. So if your goal is to look lean or toned, I’d have to guess you don’t want to add fat but that you also don’t want to be all skin and bone, with limbs like spongebob. That leaves 1 tissue, muscle or “lean body mass”.

  • That means at the least maintaining what lean body mass you do have, which requires stimulus (aka, lifting).

• Posture

  • Lifting weights, properly, improves posture. Models have good posture. Lifting weights properly makes you a model? yes.

Feeling Better

All types of exercise have endorphin benefits, and doing things that are challenging in general is an easy way to feel better each day. That being said, cardio and resistance training act on your brain in pretty different ways.

Cardio in the long run is a cortisol booster. Coritsol is the stress hormone. That can be good, as cortisol is also helpful in making you feel awake and alert. But too much, or not the right balance can lead to lower testosterone (this matters for chicks too).

Lower testosterone doesn’t just mean a soft voice, lack of facial hair, or lower sex drive in men. It really means your classic over-stressed symptoms: low energy, anxiety, bad sleep, difficulty making good food choices, or binging netflix instead of finishing your project.

For both men and women adequate testosterone plays a pivotal role in overall health, stress and weight management, and mood - it literally makes you feel better. How can we naturally balance out the testosterone-coritsol relationship? Lifting weights.

You might not feel it right away, but in the 24-48 hours after a lift that hormone balance is improving. You may notice it in your sleep that night, you may notice it in your sense of humor, or you may just feel less stressed. However you feel it, remember that as your reason for coming back.

For questions on how to structure a lifting routine that doesn’t leave you juiced up like johnny bravo, send an email to ideen@vicesfitness.com.