by Affiliate Trainer Jillian Lewis
If you knew that a certain type of exercise could benefit your heart, improve your balance, strengthen your bones, and help you lose weight all while making you look and feel better, wouldn’t you want to get started? Well, studies show that strength training can provide all those benefits and more.
Strength Training is physical activity designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a specific muscle or muscle group. When we think about strength training, many of us think about buff, leering, self-involved dudes at a Gold’s Gym. In reality, it’s so much more than that! Traditional cardiovascular exercise is known to help with improving heart health, general fitness and reducing body fat. However, strength training can bring all those benefits and MORE, including improving posture, coordination, and strengthening your bones. How awesome is that!
Strength training or weight/resistance training with the use of free weights, weight machines or body weight has many benefits on top of what traditional cardio has to offer. It is recommended that you do strength training two to three times a week, with at least one day of rest between each session. If you want to switch it up as well, you can also strength train by practicing certain kinds of yoga, playing parkour, or even by lifting your children into the air. Who would have thought such a thing? There are so many favorable options.
Regular strength training will help to increase or maintain muscle mass as well as improving general fitness. It boosts your metabolism and the number of calories you burn during training and after training, which is the key to fat loss and maintaining lower levels of body fat.
Strength training can aid management of chronic diseases. Did you know this? It has been known to alleviate symptoms of arthritis, help diabetics manage their blood sugar, and improve general well being, energy levels and mood. It will elevate your level of endorphins and improve insulin sensitivity which lowers the risk of most chronic diseases. Given, there is virtually no condition where exercise is not recommended to help in some capacity.
Weight training for osteoporosis not just walking or doing aerobics, but lifting weights can help protect your bones and prevent osteoporosis-related fractures? Osteoporosis is a condition that causes bones to weaken and become brittle and fragile. It can be prevented by regular strength training as well. Studies show that strength training over a period of time can help prevent bone loss and may even help build new bone. It helps to improve bone mineral density which is important in staving off osteoporosis as we get older.
Lifting moderate to heavy weights with good form should provide tremendous, noticeable benefits in a relatively short period of time. You will probably start noticing benefits within a month and marked differences in your body shape and tone by the third month. It can be hard at first as your body adjusts to this type of exercise, but in the long run it is well worth it!