For many reasons a lot of us believe that Cardio workouts are the only way we can go about burning calories and losing weight. Whilst it is important to have several cardio sessions a week in our exercise program, it is just as important to have at least 2 sessions of strength training, using weights, as well. During cardio sessions, we burn calories whilst we are actually doing the exercise, strength training workouts have the added bonus of continued calorie burning a few hours after we have worked out. Strength training has so many other benefits such as boosting your metabolism, increasing bone density (which is especially important for women once they hit their thirties and beyond) and it is great to help reshape your body.
The aim for this sort of training is to combine upper and lower body, complete 8-12 reps, with the last few reps requiring all your effort, and completing 2-3 sets of each exercise. Some examples include bicep curls, tricep extensions, shoulder press, chest press and leg press just to name a few. These exercises can be incorporated with squats and lunges as well to get that full body workout by working more muscles at the one time.
To start with many people find it easier to use the machines at the gym and then move onto free weights. If you're not able to access the gym, you could purchase various size dumbbells or even just using cans of food you have in your kitchen.
So why not give it a go, venture into the "other" side and give strength training a go. Good luck :)
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