When we put aside the health benefits, which there are many, the main goal people want to achieve while working out is to look better. For some of us that means to achieve more muscular development or sculpt a more toned physique, in any case there are all a combination of building muscle and burning fat. Getting clear picture of what is happening when you workout and developing a better insights of what you are exactly trying to achieve with each component of your workouts will help you develop a plan to get you from point A to point B in a shortest time possible.

Many people do fail in this important step. They somehow choose not to develop their understanding so they are doomed to spend their time, energy and money for experimenting with inefficient methods that promise to yield results yet have no scientific and physiological basis. Therefore I want to give you most important points on both goals we all desire to witness in our lives.

How to Gain Muscle Mass?

Resistance training is all about building muscle mass. Weight lifting alone is never going to burn fat no matter what twists and techniques you try to follow. Why it is so? It is because you can not change anaerobic nature of weight lifting - gain muscle exercises no matter how you slice it.

Anaerobic means without oxygen. This refers to the energy systems you are using while performing any physical activity. Anaerobic activities are shorter in duration and use the phosphagen and glycolysis as their energy source.

Phosphagen and glycolysis are responsible for the rapid production of ATP - energy donating molecule responsible for all muscular contractions. They are on play while during any demanding or explosive activities such as weight training or sprinting. Those are so far away from fat burning that no matter how many reps you do, you will not burn even a gram of body fat. You can't make resistance training a fat burning or a high calorie expending activity.

But you should know that weight training is an indirect fat burning activity because it stimulates muscle growth. The more muscle mass you have, the higher is your metabolic rate. Muscle is high in metabolic activity as opposed to fat. Therefore as much muscle gain you achieve you will expend more calories in a days time.

Whole point is simple: primary function of weight training is muscle stimulation. The resistance applied by the weight stimulates muscle to grow. More resistance equals more stimulation. You can turn the training intensity volume up or down , but make not mistakes, the weight lifting component of your exercise program is all about muscle gain. Approaching it any other way is a mistake.

What is Fat Burning?

Fat burning depends mainly on caloric consumption versus caloric expenditure. It is simple math, you need to consume fewer calories than you expend. Energy (calorie) deficit in your body forces the body to derive fuel from the breakdown of stored energy supplies (fat).

Both elements are in your control: calorie consumption and calorie expenditure. Proper balancing those two factors are the main components of the fat burning .You can consume less, expend more, or do a combination of both.

Your diet is naturally very important and plays a big role in fat burning process. The more concerned you are with losing fat, the more careful you must by with your caloric intake. You need to create a calorie deficit and this can be done by gradual lowering of your caloric intake over a span of time. Using good calorie calculator and proper meal plans are fastest way to achieve this.

The other thing to improve is off course calorie expenditure. Cardiovascular activity when properly done, increase the total calories you burn in a days time. This will further help you create the energy deficit.

I hope this is clear now. Don't you ever confuse the processes of fat burning and muscle building? If you do your results will suffer on both ends because this misunderstanding is often the catalyst for an inefficient training approach that tries to accomplish both things at once. Building muscle and burning fat are two separate processes.

Maximizing your results will depend on how much this two processes are contained in workout - diet program you follow. No nonsense how to gain muscle mass program is treating weight training as a means to fast building muscle mass and energy manipulation through nutritional intake and cardiovascular expenditure as the components of effective fat burning. Therefore such separate but harmonic approach is most effective and gives you both, best muscle gain and fat burning results in shortest time possible.