Does Strength Training Burn Calories?

I think everyone knows the answer to this — yes, yes, most definitely yes. But exactly why does it burn calories, how does it do that, and what else does strength training give us that sets it apart from just about any other way you can possibly try and get in shape?

Here are a few answers.

Yes — And It Burns Them For Longer

Doing sets of strength training really gets the oxygen flowing. And the best thing about it all? Study after study has proven that something called your post exercise oxygen consumption level is much higher after a bout of weight training than just plain old, steady-state cardio.

Strength training tends to push your body, your muscles, your entire system much more forcefully than cardio does (unless we’re talking about High Intensity Interval Training), and when you force your muscles into this state, your body continues to burn calories for hours afterwards.

It’s not the “fat burning zone” or the “ideal heart rate” or anything like that — this is the fact that tough repetitions literally cause your muscles to beg for oxygen and consume it at a higher rate that will have you burning fat after a workout is done. Think about that for a second — your body is still doing stuff after you’ve left the gym.

Yes — And You’ll Sweat, Hard

Because cardio produces a lot of sweating and a lot of messy, soaked t-shirts, people tend to think it burns more calories and helps you lose more fat.

If this were true, we’d all be able to pop sweatshirts on and go for runs and lose double the calories (that’s a myth), or — even easier — just take a relaxing steam bath and watch the pounds melt away before our eyes.

None of that works. You need to work to lose fat and calories, and artificially increasing the amount you sweat will probably just dehydrate you. Fat is consumed as fuel by your muscles (and a whole lot of other complicated internal processes that I don’t need to get into here), not sweat out through your pores.

But I thought you said strength training causes you to sweat? Well, sure it does. But it’s in a different way — a way that you might only recognize when you give up the gym machines and start with some simple back squats, for example. When you truly do a compound lift, and then try and do a few more of them, and suddenly you’ve gone from a light sweat to a serious, drenching torrent — you’ll realize why strength training is plain old efficient as hell.

Yes — And It Does So Much More at the Same Time

This is really the greatest thing about strength training — while you’re burning those calories and setting your body up to burn calories post-workout and sweating in a serious way and consuming fat, you’re also building your muscles and getting stronger. Just running, running, running doesn’t really make you that strong. Yeah, your legs will get better — there’s no doubt. But look at any typical marathon runner and you’ll see that he’s not strong so much as sinewy and built for long-distance, steady-state racing.

If that’s the body you want, by all means — keep running those marathons! They’re great mental tests and there are hundreds of them per year, and the running community is tons of fun. But if you’re looking for the body of a sprinter — get yourself to those weights as soon as possible.