Can powerlifting make you lose weight?
Powerlifting can’t make you
lose weight. A caloric deficit does.
Powerlifting can be used to bring up your energy consumption to achieve this, however,
diet is the better lever to pull for quick results. Always consult a doctor before making drastic changes to your
diet.
What is your why
These questions are key to your personal success. Sit down and answer them in writing. At best as detailed as possible. Life will get in the way of your personal dreams and desires. You need to be sure why and how you are going to take care of losing weight if that is important to you. Otherwise, you will get distracted and not make it. Many people go about their lives like this:
-
What do I want
-
How do I get it
-
Why do I want it
If you focus on what you want you will run in hundreds of directions and arrive nowhere. You will spread your resources and time thin and accomplish little to nothing. Something interesting happens when you flip the order of these questions on their head:
Powerlifting
To do this you have three attempts for each lift. The one with the highest amount of weight lifted for each exercise gets summed up. This firms your total and the result for your competition.
The heavier you are, the easier it becomes for you to move big weights. This has to do with biological and mechanical factors. Physics dictates that a body of bigger mass will find it easier to move a body of the smaller mass set that everything else is the same. From a biological standpoint, it is also easier to lift a big weight when the contracting muscles are bigger.
All of this does not set
powerlifting up to be the best choice when your aim is to
lose weight. Yes,
powerlifting is still better than doing nothing, however other options are better to lose the maximum amount of weight in the shortest amount of time.
Powerlifting programs to consider
How you lose weight
The first thing to do to
lose weight is to get into a caloric deficit. Please consult a doctor before making big changes to your diet. Simply put, if you stop eating you will
lose weight. However, that is neither sustainable nor healthy.
What helps to get into a caloric deficit, while still eating to nourish your body, is to exercise. Exercising helps to burn energy and therefore justify a higher food intake or stay at the same levels of eating while losing weight.
Powerlifting is very effective in terms of calories burned per second. This is why you sometimes read that weightlifting or
powerlifting are some of the best ways to
lose weight. What these articles leave out is that
powerlifting is not an activity that is sustainable for a long period of time. But if calories
is
a function of burned calories over time. The most effective exercises for this are endurance sports for which the human body is built. You will burn more calories running for twenty minutes at a constant pace than going through
a 5
sets of 5 repetitions back
squat workout that arches your fitness level. If you could
deadlift for twenty seconds without a break you will burn more calories than running. However o doubt you will pull that off.
Can powerlifting make you lose weight
Powerlifting does not make you
lose weight, your body does. If you feed your body less than it needs, you will
lose weight. You can bring your energy consumption up through exercise.
Powerlifting is one way of doing this, but probably not the most effective one. To be successful in
powerlifting you need more, not less mass. If losing weight is your priority opt for endurance sports or circuit training. Endurance training takes longer but curls less. Circuit training is quicker but sucks ass.