Anaerobic exercise, unlike aerobic exercise, does not require the body to provide a large amount of oxygen. It is used to strengthen and tone muscles in the skeletal muscle system. Regardless of your health or fitness goal - if you want to build muscle, lose weight or simply tone up - resistance training, often called weight training, will help you.
If your programme includes only aerobic exercise, such as swimming and running, you will find that weight and fat loss will reach a plateau. Muscle is made up of fibres. In our daily activities, we use only a small percentage of our bodies' muscle fibres. However, if we were to use 100 per cent of the fibres, we would burn more energy. The fewer fibres you use, the easier it is for your body to gain weight, as it is not working efficiently. Resistance training will also raise your BMR (basal metabolic rate - the number of calories your body requires to simply function). This means you can burn more calories even when sleeping.
Examples of anaerobic exercises include push-ups, crunches, squats and arm curls.
