Because when I was in college I did this in the weight-room and collapsed a lung. Apparently the pressure build-up in my chest caused a hole to form in my lung. I was laid up in the hospital for 15 days with a chest tube. It was an extremely negative experience, and it caused me to give up going after strength gains in favor of a body builders approach with proper breathing.

The injury is rare, but it does happen. I feel obligated to warn everyone to be careful and take these exercises seriously.

I didn’t read the rest of the comments, so maybe this has been said.

I had to address your claim that running/biking will get you to lose weight faster than weight training.

Technically, you are right. You will lose more weight. Included in that weight will be a lot of your muscle mass. What burns more calories, muscle or fat? The answer is muscle.

That means that with all the biking/running you’re doing, you will lose muscle and your metabolism will drop. That means that continuing to lose weight will require you to consume even less calories that you were consuming before and/or exercising even more to make up for your lower metabolism.

The solution is to add weight training to the mix along with your cardio work while also eating enough protein (~1g/lb of lean body mass). This will put your body under enough stress that it will retain more muscle while losing fat, which will keep your metabolism where it is at rather than having it slow down as it would with muscle loss caused by only cardio.

Lance Armstrong is a perfect example of this. So are marathon runners. They do extreme amounts of cardio and have little muscle mass. Sure, they are ripped, which is a result of low bodyfat, but they have very little muscle.

Another benefit to weight training is the extended increase in your metabolism after the actual work is done. I don’t have any studies handy, but I have read some that suggest an increased metabolic rate for up to 3-4 hours after you leave the gym. That doesn’t happen with running/biking.

The calorie burn while doing the actual activity of running/biking may be higher, but that is short term thinking. In the long run, the benefits of adding weight training to your routine quickly outnumber the higher calorie burn of biking/running during the actual workout.

Im a college student and without the gym I would lose my mind (and often do if I havent been there in a while…) It is the best (relating back to your top 7 reasons) way to release stress and take care of the most important aspect of your life: you!

Its not common these days to get a moment to yourself, and a time to benefit yourself so greatly.

Again, great post. *bookmarks*

pumpin’ iron is my guess