What's the best use of resistance training for fat loss?

Essien

The goal is fat loss while maintaining as much muscle / strength as possible. My weights routine right now is pretty much all compound (mainly deadlift, legpress, bench and b/w chin ups) with short rest periods. I do this as I'm simply trying to hit as many muscles as I can in as short a time as possible, plus pretty much everything I've read on the subject suggests doing compound exercises.

The main thing I'm not sure about is volume. Should I be aiming for higher weight, higher reps or should I just keep going till I'm fcuked? Up until now it's pretty much been the third option, though averaging about 6 sets and 6/8 reps depending on the exercise. That would usually work up a good sweat and get the heart going.

FWIW I usually spend about an hour in the gym - 30 mins of weights followed by 20 mins of cardio with a 5 min warm up/down at either end.

amazingemmet

Firstly volume = weight lifted x reps x sets. Its not just an arbitrary number of reps and sets.

Here's a fat loss template:

All sets are to last 45-60seconds, 60 seconds being preferable, so this will if lifting with a tempo of 3 seconds down and 1 second up mean 12-15 reps per set

pick 4 upper body exercises and 4 lower body exercises

Do them as supersets ie do one set then rest do the other set etc. To make this work in a commercial gym if training at peak times pick one machine/bar exercise and one dumbell exercise, ie seated cable row and lunges, Squats and Db overhead press, the combinations can be fairly diverse

A1 lower rest 45-60secs

A2 upper rest 45-60 secs


Progressions:

week 1 2 sets 12-15 reps
week 2 2 sets 12-15 reps
week 3 3 sets 12-15 reps
week 4 4 sets 12-15 reps add intensity techniques on all last sets if you know how to do them.

This is one training cycle at the end pick new exercises and start again from week 1.

Avoid the cardio its a waste of time til all your other bases are covered.

This is one way to structure training that I've found highly effective for fat loss particularly with people who haven't got that much gym experience, less then 2 years. There's many ways to skin a cat though

Essien

Great stuff amazingemmet, thanks for that. Just one thing though, what exactly do you mean by the following.

amazingemmet wrote: »

Avoid the cardio its a waste of time til all your other bases are covered.

FWIW, the cardio I currently do is either skipping or sprints on the bike.

Also, I'm assuming all exercises should still be compound?

amazingemmet

Essien wrote: »

Great stuff amazingemmet, thanks for that. Just one thing though, what exactly do you mean by the following.



FWIW, the cardio I currently do is either skipping or sprints on the bike.

Also, I'm assuming all exercises should still be compound?

I mean, making some assumptions, you've got limited time in the gym per week 3-4 sessions probably. And of that time you'd be better off spend it lifting weights for the whole session then spliting the sessions 50/50 cardio weights. If you've got your own rope then doing some skipping on off days would be fine.