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I am confused & need help, as I keep getting different answers.
While doing stength training with cardio for weight loss. Do you want more weight with less reps or less weight with more reps? I am trying to lose weight & tone muscle. I do not want to bulk up.

I am not a trainer but I have been working out with a persoanl trainer for over a year and she is right. You need muscle mass to burn calories and women rarely bulk up. I suggest doing 15 reps of a weight that becomes VERY difficult at 12. This way you are building muscle. Don't forget to up your weights and switch it up so your body does not get used to anything and always has to work,

TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE

You must be upright. You must stick to the proper tecnique. I see people in the gym all of the time overdoing it and NOT doing a thing to help them succeed because they are hunched over, doing too high of weights, or simply poor posture. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

You must sit with your back upright/ you must breathe through each rep/ YOU must stretch...

Regardless of what anyone says, you must have this in order to see results. If you have good posture and can only do ONE SET, then it doesn't matter - that is the point. If you have poor posture and can lift like HULK HOGAN, it's worthless and you might as well call a Dr. because you are going to hurt yourself!

Just a reminder. If you go to a good gym, you would have support walking around helping those that have poor technique.

:)

You can't tone until you've got significant muscle that you want to then change the shape of. Don't worry about bulking up - bulking is something that is hard to do, takes a lot of work, and almost never happens unintentionally.

Generally, I think it's a waste of time to do 15 reps. You can't do heavy enough weight at that high of reps to really challenge muscles enough to grow. Growing muscles helps burn fat, is healthy, and makes you look defined and scuplted - I'm not talking about adding bulk (which by the way usually means adding muscle, fat, and retaining more water in the muscles to make them look bigger). Hi-rep workouts ARE useful for towards the end of a several week or month series when you are building up to a special event or date that you want to peak for - they will help shed body fat for a short period of time, but working out that way all the time will not work to keep shedding fat, and it doesn't work if you haven't first put in the time building bigger stronger muscles. Plus, 15-rep sets take a long time, and most people don't really want to spend more time working out for less results.

Generally, there is no reason to go over 12 reps other than the reasons above. It's pretty important to vary the number of reps you are doing as well as to keep increasing weight. You can also get into varying tempo - but that's a big more advanced. If you are just starting a new series of exercises, a good plan would be to start with 2-3 sets of 12 reps and do that the first week - then the 2nd week move to 2-3 sets of 8 reps at a higher weight. Then 3rd week 2-3 sets of 10 reps at same or higher weight. Then 4th week 2-3 sets of 10 reps at higher weight. After 4 weeks it's time to change up your exercises and challenge your body with something new - start over with 12 reps...etc. Write down what you're going to do - go the gym with a plan, and record with weights and reps you actually did so you can make sure to do more the next time you do that workout.

The human body is designed to adapt - you must change up the demand you put on it in order to get it to change. There's a saying that's fitting here...something about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results = definition of madness. Same goes for cardio. You can't do the same cardio for 30 mins every day and expect your body to change. You've got to find new and different ways to up the anti and force your body to adapt to new challenges.

It's not hard, but it does require thought and planning. If you're a beginner it can be enormously helpful to follow a plan....from a book or have a trainer write one up for you...or use one that's on fitclick! After you've been at it for a while you'll eventually get comfortable (and confident) writing your own plans.