In relation to getting into shape, the terms high intensity and low intensity are used a lot but aren’t defined with nearly the same frequency. I suppose that’s because we’re all supposed to know the difference…but many don’t really understand the difference at all.

In general, low intensity exercises work your heart rate at around 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. A high intensity exercise works your heart rate at around 75 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. I suppose this means that anything working your heart at between 60 percent and 75 percent of your maximum heart rate is a moderate intensity exercise, but they must have a bad public relations firm because you don’t hear much about them.

You can determine your maximum heart rate by taking your current age from 220. So, for example, if you’re 50 at the moment, then your maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute. Don’t let the term “maximum heart rate” fool or scare you. It isn’t referred to as such because it’s the maximum rate your heart can beat before damage occurs; it’s simply the absolute maximum rate your heart will beat.

The 220-age formula is only an estimate and, depending on your individual physiology, you may find yourself exceeding that number. That’s fine, you shouldn’t panic because it’s nearly impossible to damage a healthy heart with exercise.

High intensity exercises are simply much more beneficial for your overall health. Aside from burning calories, these exercises help increase muscle mass; low intensity exercises don’t do this. Even if you’re not looking to become a bodybuilder, building muscle is always a good idea for your overall health and prevention of accidental injuries during everyday life.

Low intensity exercises also don’t do very much to increase your overall metabolism while high intensity exercises do. This increase in metabolism is crucial to overall weight loss and general health.

With the exception of the injured, ill, out-of-shape or elderly, there is no reason for anyone to stick solely to a low intensity workout. If you do happen to be in poor shape, then you should begin exercising with a low intensity workout for a little while as you build up to high intensity exercises.

So why do people stick to low intensity workouts? The main reasons are because low intensity exercises are easier and a trainer may have recommended it.

Wait…If high intensity is better, why would a trainer recommend low intensity? The two main reasons are personal liability and a misunderstanding of the numbers involved. Basically, you are much less likely to injure yourself during a low intensity workout, so a trainer is protecting themselves by recommending a safe exercise plan. This is easy enough to understand, although a proper trainer will do their job and train you not to injure yourself during high intensity exercises.

The second reason, a misunderstanding, requires a bit more explanation. You see, low intensity exercises burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises burn approximately 50 percent fat for energy while high intensity exercises burn approximately 40 percent fat for energy. This difference is not great enough to justify the tradeoffs. Besides, it doesn’t actually mean you burn more fat with low intensity exercises.

Confused? This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you burn 100 calories by walking for 20 minutes. Walking is a low impact exercise, so you burned 50 fat calories (50 percent of one hundred).

Ten minutes of high intensity exercise, however, can easily burn 160 calories. Since high intensity exercises burn 40 percent fat for energy, you just burned 64 fat calories. You burned 14 more fat calories, but only spent 10 minutes doing it. Basically, the percentage is technically smaller, but you burn more total calories in less time with high intensity exercises. A smaller percentage of a bigger number is better than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.

In addition to this, low intensity workouts only burn fat calories while you’re actually doing them. High intensity workouts, because they increase your metabolism, continue burning fat for hours after you’re done working out. And, because muscle burns more calories than fat, the increased muscle mass means you’ll be burning more calories every second of the day because of your high intensity workout.

As you can see, there really isn’t any reason to stick with a low intensity workout when you can step up to a high intensity workout and get a greater benefit in less time.

If you want to increase your muscle mass, you need to eat more and work out. Thanks for coming, have a safe drive home!

Alright, so there’s a bit more to it than that. Realistically, however, that is the simple truth. There is no miracle to be purchased at a health food store or off of an infomercial that will build your muscle mass without consistent and intelligent adherence to those two concepts: eat more and work out.

For people who need to lose weight but also want to gain muscle mass, you need to make a choice. The way you eat and the way you work out are very different for both of these objectives. While not impossible to do both at the same time, it is much more effective for most people to focus on one or the other.

We’re going to look at these two concepts individually so that you can actually put them into consistent and intelligent practice.

Working Out
The bad news is that, to achieve maximum gain in your muscle mass building, you’re going to need equipment. The good news, however, is that you don’t need the equipment you’re probably picturing right now.

You’re just not going to build significant amounts of muscle mass without equipment. You can lose weight or tone muscles without much equipment, but for actually and substantially increasing your muscle mass it’s just not going to happen.

We all know that over the last century a dizzying array of machines have been designed to “help” people build muscle mass and stay healthy. The problem most people have is in determining which pieces of equipment are correct for them.

I’ll make it very easy for you. Two simple words: free weights.

Workout machines have been designed to work muscles in a specific way, in a specific range of motion, period. And, for achieving that goal, they are very good at it. However, that’s exceptionally limiting. Most of this equipment has been designed for general use, meaning that it needs to help as many different people achieve as many different goals as possible, because that maximizes profit by appealing to a wider audience.

Free weights, however, allow you to do things machines can’t. With free weights, you can stimulate larger groupings of muscles at once, which is the most effective way to build muscles. Speaking of weight, use a lot of it. For maximum impact, you are going to be working yourself to muscle failure every time, in every set. Muscle failure is defined as the point at which you can no longer properly do another repetition. If you’re looking to build up your muscle mass, working with light weights isn’t going to do it. If you can do more than 15 repetitions before failing, the weight is too light. As you get stronger, you’ll naturally need to increase the amount of weight.

There are six exercises you should focus on at the beginning, all of which are most effectively done with free weights:

Bar Dips for working your shoulders, chest and arms;
Dead Lifts for working your legs, shoulders and back;
Overhead Presses for working your shoulders and triceps;
Bench Presses for working your chest, shoulders, and triceps;
Squats for working your legs and lower back; and
Pull Ups and/or Barbell Rows for working your back and biceps.

While you can certainly move on to more advanced workout regimens, you shouldn’t even begin considering it until you have a solid foundation of these six exercises. In reality, most people don’t need the advanced regimens and would do perfectly well if they did nothing but these six exercises consistently and with ever increasing amounts of weight.

Weight training is a very intense workout and you shouldn’t do it more than 3 or 4 times a week. Your muscles need time to recuperate because it’s during that recuperation that the actual growth takes place. Limit your workouts to 30 – 45 minutes, 3 or 4 times a week and stick to it religiously. You’ll be amazed with the results.