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Home » Fitness » Embracing Strength Training Helped This Woman Reach Her Fitness Goals – SELF

When Australian fitness Instagrammer @ah.fitty swapped her regular cardio workout for a workout regimen focused on strength training , she didn't expect it to make much of a differencebut it did. The Instagrammer has documented her journey since introducing body-weight and added-weight strength moves to her routine, and it's warranted multiple before-and-after photos on her page. The pics show how her body has gotten strongerand more tonedthrough her strength workouts. And it's got ah.fitty feeling better than ever.

"I love the change that has occurred and never ever thought my body could look like this through lifting," she wrote on one Instagram before-and-after. "Don't be afraid of weights!"

Of course, every person is different, and we don't know this Instagrammer's exact workout regimen as well as other factors, like diet, that might be playing a role in her progress. But Cris Dobrosielski, C.S.C.S., C.P.T., spokesman for the American Council on Exercise and founder of Monumental Results , tells SELF it's not surprising she would see changes after swapping her regular cardio workouts for strength training.

His reasoning (in simple terms): When your fitness routine is mostly steady-state cardio (i.e., workouts like running or biking lasting longer than 20 minutes), you work the same muscles over and over. Over time, those muscles start to become efficient at that workout, and you start to see less of a response from your body, meaning fewer visible changes in your muscle tone and less calorie burn. "When youre doing steady or long-slow aerobic activity, you start to see a flatness to the muscle because of the volume of time spent [working the body] at submaximal effort," Dobrosielski says.

Strength training changes the stress on the body: new movements, plus the added "external load," i.e., weights. Dobrosielski says it can "wake up" parts of your body that you havent been working. "Throw in a set of squats or kettlebell swings or overhead shoulder presses, and if you havent been doing that, theres an immediate challenge to the body," he says. "Even with moderate and light weight training, theres an observable response."

Over time, regular strength training will help you build lean muscle mass. Since muscle requires more energy to sustain than fat, this ultimately helps your body burn more calories at rest. And if you continue to increase your weights as you build strength and endurance, you should keep seeing results. (Pssstwe have a guide to picking the right weights for strength training here !)

Based on her Instagrams, it looks like ah.fitty 's strength training includes body-weight moves, as well as dumbbell moves and some straight-up weight lifting. Having added-weight moves in her workouts is key, Dobrosielski says. "Shes adding an external load greater than her body weight to particular joints in her body, and those joints respond because they havent been asked to do that before," he says. "They respond in a way that burns more calories, changes her metabolism, and creates some change in her muscle mass even if it's small."

As for ah.fitty's fear that she'd bulk up from lifting weights, Dobrosielski says that's a common myth. "Weight training is synonymous with bodybuilding, and thats not true," he says. "If you pick exercises that are safe and do a low to moderate amount of volumeso youre not doing a thousand lunges but sets of four or sets of sixwhat youre going to develop is some lean muscle mass but also confidence and strength."

Bottom line: Strength training can lead to the results ah.fitty saw. But Dobrosielski doesn't advise ditching cardio altogether. Cardio has benefits , too, like improving heart health, burning calories, and helping you build endurance . He recommends trying a high intensity interval training (HIIT) workout that includes strength trainingwhether that's body-weight moves or added-weight movesas well as cardio intervals. "You get this combination of strength and endurance," he says. "You get all of the cardiovascular benefits through intervals on the treadmill, and you get stronger shoulders and back muscles, too."

Check out one of our favorite equipment-free HIIT workouts here . And for more workouts (including strength training!), head over to our workout finder .

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Watch: New Years Challenge Strength Workout: Power Moves

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Embracing Strength Training Helped This Woman Reach Her Fitness Goals - SELF

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Home » Fitness » Embracing Strength Training Helped This Woman Reach Her Fitness Goals – SELF