4+ Strength Training Exercises For Weight Loss & Muscle Tone

Best Strength Training Weight Loss Exercise Routine

Impatient to get started and enjoy the fat-burning benefits? Here’s a great workout plan to get you started. It’s simple, effective, and based on our five top strength exercises listed above. 

First, perform a simple warm-up (5-10 minutes). The aim of the warm-up is to stimulate blood flow to work muscles with light exercises such as walking, knee-bends, or light stretches.

Next, perform the routine below. Cycle through the entire routine (five separate exercises) three to five times. Perform 12 – 15 repetitions for each set, focusing on great technique (form). 

1. Squats (begin with bodyweight-only squats, performed as a wall sit or free-standing squat).
2. Press-ups (wall or box press-ups, moving on to full press-ups when ready). 
3. Deadlifts (using a light barbell).
4. Shoulder Press (using a light barbell or dumbbell).
5. Plank (Hold for 10 – 20 seconds, with knees on the floor, transitioning to legs straight as you progress).

End with gentle stretches, focusing specific attention on the chest, back, shoulders, and legs. You should aim to hold stretches for around 12-20 seconds to gently release tension in the muscle and to disperse lactic acid as a means of minimizing the risk of stiffness one to two days after your workout.  

Focus on perfect form and start with low weights. You may need a personal trainer or fitness professional to help you initially with technique. And remember, always consult your doctor if you’re beginning an exercise regime for the first time. Wear light, comfortable clothing, and stay hydrated! 

Perform the routine every other day. Muscles need 24-48 hours to rest and repair. When you feel ready, slowly increase weights, &/or switch up the repetitions and sets listed here for supersets. Ready to switch up your routine for a wider range of exercises? Then check out our article on muscular endurance-based exercises to learn how to push your gains even further!

Is Weight Loss Training Good?

First, can a beginner burn fat by incorporating strength training exercises into their routine? Heck, yes! In fact, a review in the medical journal Sports Medicine recently stated that strength training for weight loss is a great strategy, with exercisers shedding around 1.4% of their total body fat via strength training alone. For reference, that’s a similar poundage to how much we might expect to lose using aerobic exercise like swimming or jogging. So we can say definitively that lifting weights is great for losing weight and positively altering your body fat percentage.

Resistance training helps us play the long game regarding fat loss because the more muscle we have in our body, the higher our resting metabolic rate will be. Now, our resting metabolic rate, or RMR, is the number of calories our body needs to power it at rest. The more muscle we have (which we can increase via strength training), the higher our RMR will be. And the higher it is, the more fat your body is burning at rest. That ultimately means a leaner body, a faster metabolism, and a body that favors burning fat calories over storing them. 

That’s exactly why a recent study found that lifting weights has been found to reduce intra-abdominal fat (improving the way we look AND feel!). When strength training is performed using supersets (where sets and repetitions are performed with little to no rest in between), the fat-burning benefits increase even further! 

Health Benefits Of Strength Training

Resistance training has also been identified as a potential therapeutic intervention in treating Type II diabetes and has been found to be as effective, in this regard, as cardio exercise. Researchers found that both muscular strength (hypertrophy)-focused exercise and muscular endurance-focused exercise helped mediate insulin levels and insulin sensitivity, lowered waist circumference and overall fat mass, increased lean muscle mass, improved the patient’s lipid profile, and lowered blood pressure. Strength training has also been proven to improve postmenopausal symptoms, with abdominal strengthening (core) exercises also recently shown in a 2022 academic study to significantly reduce dysmenorrhea. This means that females can benefit from a whole host of health-related benefits when they head to the weight room!

First, strength training doesn’t just burn fat (although that’s a great reason, alone, to hit the weights more often!). It also plays a vital role in countering depressive symptoms, with resistance training subsequently recommended as an effective adjunct treatment for depression.  Exercise sessions of forty-five minutes or less exhibited the most positive outcomes in terms of depression reduction. 

By boosting your metabolic rate and enabling calorie expenditure, lifting weights can also lower the risk of obesity, especially when combined with a healthy diet. For example, randomized clinical trials found that individuals incorporating resistance training into their exercise regime for one to two hours per week lowered their risk of obesity by as much as 30%.

Lifting weights doesn’t just build muscle. It also strengthens bones; a 2021 meta-analysis has shown strength training to be the most effective kind of exercise when it comes to improving total hip bone mineral density in patients with osteopenia and osteoporosis. 

Conclusion

The bottom line is this. Work, study, school, and even a side hustle (or two) mean that your time is truly valuable. And with so many fitness fads around, you need to know that if you’re going to invest that time in working out, it needs to be 100% effective! 

The great news is that science has proven the fat-burning benefits of strength training for weight loss, so strength-based workouts can be considered a great investment of your time. 

So the next time you hit the gym, consider heading to the weights room (or pick up a set of dumbbells from your local sports store for great home workouts!). It’ll accelerate fat burning during workouts and help your body burn more fat at rest. And it’ll make you stronger and even offer mental and physical health benefits.