3 Benefits of strength training

If you knew that a particular exercise would benefit your body balance, overall health and help you to lose weight; would you do it? Of course - you would get started right away. This form of training can provide all of these benefits - and much more.

Strength training

Strength training, also called weight training or resistance training, is a physical activity designed to improve overall fitness by exercising a particular muscle on the body. Muscle training involves weight machines, free-weights or using your body weight to do the exercise.

According to Neil Pire, an exercise physiologist and a national director of wellness, the human growth principle is to overload the muscle to get stronger and adapt to training.

It’s also important for people to know that strength training is not about bodybuilders lifting weights and looking big in the gym. Being consistent in training also helps to prevent the loss of lean muscle from Sarcopenia, a term that refers to the loss of muscle mass due to aging.

Strength training is also a vital part of your general fitness and helps people of all ages who have arthritis, obesity, or related heart conditions.

According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, the Health and Human Services (HHS) department suggests strength training for adolescents and children.

Children between the ages of 6 and 17 should incorporate strength training for sixty minutes at least three days a week. Adults should aim to do moderate or intense training twice weekly. However, for intermediate trainers, you can train up to four times a week. Even though you are doing a lot of training, you need to rest in between strength workouts.

Strength training helps you to get better during workouts and also get better between the workouts in terms of endurance. It’s paramount that you give yourself rest days in between to allow your body to recover and rebuild. Rest and a proper diet allow your body to rebuild and recover from the rigorous training.

How does strength training help your health?

Apart from the frequent benefits that you see on social media, strength training helps in other ways too. Here are three ways that strength training benefits your body and lifestyle.

1. Strength training makes you fitter and stronger

This one is obvious, but it should not be overlooked. The strength of muscle tissue is important. It makes it easier for you to use your muscles daily. I especially recommend exercise when one is older to slow down the muscle loss process.

Strength training is also referred to as resistance training since it has toning and strengthening aspects involved. The resistant forces help someone to grow if they are consistent in doing the exercises.

Isometric resistance involves contracting muscles against an object that is not moving, such as doing push-ups. Your diet also matters when strength training. You can research the benefits of a vegan diet for strength training.

2. Protects muscle mass and bone health

When you hit 30 years of age, a normal human body starts losing 3 to 5 percent of lean mass for each year that you age.

According to the Bone and Mineral Research Journal published in 2017, the study showed that strength training counteracts this.

The journal showed that 30 minutes of twice-a-week, high impact training improves functional performance, structure, bone density and strength in postmenopausal women who have a low bone mass that negatively affected them.

Additionally, HHS highlights that for everyone, muscle-strengthening activities help to preserve strength, muscle mass and power - which are important for muscle health, joints and bones as we grow older.

3. Strength training helps to keep the weight off

Aerobic activities like running, walking, and cycling are good ways to increase the number of calories that you burn daily.

On the other side, strength training also helps - but does not burn lots of calories during the workout.

Experts in sports and exercise training say that strength training helps to increase the metabolism rate for your body during the day when you are not doing any exercises.

Conclusion

Good resistance exercises help to increase post-exercise oxygen consumption. Post-exercise oxygen consumption refers to the calories that your body will continue to burn after a rigorous exercise - whether through strength training or aerobics.