types of excersize

[__penguin__]

I just need some questions I have about excersize cleared up. Cardio is the one that burns fat, right? So what exactly does working out with weights do? It burns some fat, but it's main purpose is to that the muscles are toned and whatever once the fat is gone, and to build muscle which burns more calories all the time than fat. Correct? Also, how many hours/minutes of each should you do per day/week in order for them to be effective?
I have a more specific-to-me question, too. I have an excersize book that shows a bunch of arm/upper body excersizes (with freeweights) but shows lower body excersizes (lunges, different kinds of crunches, etc.) as well. If I'm doing DDR (dance dance revolution, also an intense lower body workout, I think domokun ) for cardio, should I bother with the lower body excersizes or should I just stick to the upper body ones (every other day, of course)? If I had unlimited time, I'd just go ahead and do both, but I don't, so I need to know if it would be extremely beneficial to make time for both. whee  

[dangerousfish]

Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio makes your body use stored fat to keep it moving as you challenge it. Cardio is when you engage the large muscles of the body, challenging them, so that your heart must beat faster to send more oxygen to the working muscles (well, your whole body, we can't express sent oxygen) and so you breath heavier to give more oxygen to the blood that your heart is pumping. You should be able to talk when working out (no gasping) and that is a good gage of how hard to go, push until you can't talk and then back off until you can talk comfortably and go at that pace. Or you can find your resting heart rate (right after laying down and resting peacefully) and then find your max heart rate (based on age, weight, and fitness level) and then when you work out make sure you are working out at 60-80% of your max heart rate. You should NEVER go higher than 90% of your maximum heart rate, only trained highly fit athletes do this. 80% is plenty high.

Weight lifting or non weight bearing muscle activity (pushups, pullups, etc) challenge the muscle you target (triceps, biceps, abs, quads, etc) into slightly breaking down and then saying, "hey! She's building a house to keep warm this winter! We need more muscle strength!" so they repair the tiny tiny tears stronger and a tiny bit bigger. Muscle is way more tasty to your body which is what it likes to eat on starvation diets. Muscle is the "powerhouse" of your body it needs waaay more fuel than lazy fat to maintain itself and hence one pound of muscle burns much more calories than a pound of fat, even when you're just sitting on your butt. People with more muscle have higher "resting metabolic rate"s, that is just how many calories you burn chilling in front of the TV. So we want to work our muscles outside of cardio to build more muscle, let it eat more calories, and make us less fat. A pound of muscle is much more dense than a pound of blobby fat so one pound of muscle takes up less room than one pound of fat. When you cardio/eat clean off the fat over the muscle you end up with those sexy muscle curves.

The amount of cardio to lose weight is most days of the week, moderately intense (the talking thing) and maybe some intense bursts throughout your workout (if you're new to working out on a regular basis don't worry about going intense, you don't want to collaspe after a workout or get discouraged, for 45-60 minutes. But even 30 minutes is awesome. Make sure you have at least one day of rest.

You already know not to lift weights everyday, your muscles need the off day to fix themselves up pretty. I do full body workout every other day, targeting each muscle in my arms/chest/back and squats for my legs. Because I do so much cardio of various types I only do a few different kinds of squats (also works the glutes) and leave it at that. Lunges damage my knees too much and I never do them, but they may be find for you. So when you do use the large muscles it your legs on a regular basis, like playing DDR (probably need at least 5 footers) you don't have to worry as much about separate muscle exercises.

Here is a link to my thread on weight lifting, the first post is full of really helpful links.  

[Soi Tsuba]

try to get your heart rate at about 145 to 170 range.