losing weight

PrettyInPunk

Just started going back to the gym,am not overweight or anything but want to lose a bit and tone up..only thing is i go on the step machine for ages but am worried it will make me legs larger and more muscly than they already are..i have quite muscly legs and is there any exercises to make them less so?

davyjose

Chances are if you are doing high reps, you won't put on bulky muscle. If you eat right, ie less calories than you use up, you will NOT increase in size, no matter what you do. If you do high sets of reps, this will come under the term Cardio, i.e. your heart-rate will increase, and you should feel out of breathe before your muscles fatigue. You should also be able to do it for about 20 mins.
When putting on muscles you need to work your muscles to failure, this tends to be a lot more sudden than fatiguing them, and happens after only a few reps (it has a lot to do with fast-twitch and slow twitch muscles - basically fast twitch muscles - the ones not used so much for cardio are the ones that bulk more easily).
But in a nutshell, continuing with cardio for more than twenty minutes without feeling fatigue in your muscles will not bulk them. Anyway muscle is a lot less dense than fat, i.e. takes up less space on your body. So a bit of muscle won't show up nearly as bad as a bit of fat. So really it depends on diet. If your not losing weight - your eating too much.

Shrimp

Ok, try doing a different exercise, the elliptical trainer is great for cardio And weight loss.

Archeron

Shrimp wrote:

Ok, try doing a different exercise, the elliptical trainer is great for cardio And weight loss.

Is an elliptical trainer like a cross trainer? I'm not sure I've ever seen one of these.