Does strength training burn a lot of calories?

This question needs to be broken down into two parts. In terms of the immediate consumption during training alone, strength training is really not that high, but if you include the continuous consumption after training and the long-term metabolic gain, its total consumption is actually higher than most aerobic exercises.

I once took a boy who just started working out, who is 175cm tall and 150kg, to do leg training for the first time. After 60 minutes, the smart watch showed that he only consumed 320 calories. He could easily burn more than 500 calories by running for 50 minutes. At that time, he complained that strength training was "ineffective for burning fat". This is actually the inherent impression of many people: After all, the number that pops up on the watch is the most intuitive, and anyone who sees a lower number will subconsciously feel that it is ineffective.

But most people ignore that the bulk of strength training consumption is not in the hour of training. What we often call the afterburn effect, which is academically known as excessive oxygen consumption after exercise, will be particularly obvious after strength training: Strength training will cause a lot of tiny damage to the muscle fibers. The body needs to repair these damages and adjust hormone levels and metabolic status from exercise mode back to quiet mode, which requires extra oxygen and heat consumption. This process can take as short as six or seven hours, and if the training intensity is high enough, it can even drag on to more than 24 hours. Let’s talk about the boy who practiced leg training before. He didn’t do any other exercise after training that day, and even ate dinner as usual. When he checked his watch before going to bed, he checked his full-day consumption statistics, which showed that he had almost 700 more calories than when he usually lay down on rest days. The more than 300 calories burned during training accounted for less than half.

If the time line is extended longer, the consumption advantage of strength training will be more obvious. The daily resting consumption of one kilogram of muscle is about 10-15 kcal, and the same weight of fat is only about 2 kcal. If you spend three to five months practicing seriously, it is not difficult to gain 4 kilograms of muscle. Calculating, you can burn an extra 40 to 50 kcal every day for no reason. It is not impressive at all. In one year, it is nearly 20,000 kcal, which is equivalent to losing five or six kilograms of pure fat. Look at the veterans at the gym who have maintained low body fat all year round. They can eat twice as much as ordinary people and still not gain weight. They rely on the basal metabolism supported by high muscle mass. If you switch to people who rely solely on aerobics, they stop training for half a month and they still eat less, and their weight immediately goes back up.

Of course, there are also many opinions from the sports nutrition community that there is no need to boast too much about the consumption of strength training. If you go to the gym to fish all the time, take a five-minute break between groups to watch short videos, and do biceps curls with one kilogram of small dumbbells. The amount is so light that you won’t be out of breath after practicing for half an hour. Not to mention the afterburn effect, the consumption during training may not be more than when you walk home quickly from get off work. Calculated, the extra consumption may only be a few dozen calories, which is not worth the bottle of sugary sports drink you bought after training.

To put it bluntly, whether the consumption is high depends on how you practice. If you are aiming at long-term control of body fat and preventing it from rebounding, even if its immediate consumption is low, it is definitely one of the most cost-effective options.