Wouldn’t you want to hit the gym if you knew it could help your heart, improve your balance, strengthen your bones and muscles, and help you lose or maintain weight? According to research, strength training can provide all of these benefits and more. Strength training, also known as weight or resistance training, is a type of physical activity that involves working out a specific muscle or muscle group against external resistance, such as free weights, weight machines, or your own body weight.
In this article, we will be giving you helpful insight as to why strength training is very essential if you want to live a very fit and energetic lifestyle.
Why is strength training important?
Strengthening exercises are beneficial for both young and older adults because they help to increase muscle strength and muscle mass while maintaining bone density. Resistance training can combat weakness and fragility and also aid in lowering the risk of osteoporosis. It can also be very beneficial for people with diabetes because it improves the body’s utilisation of insulin, thereby reducing blood glucose levels.
Additionally, strength training can enable you to make more progress towards fat loss. In addition to burning calories during and after resistance training, people also burn calories while at rest. This is due to the “after-burn effect,” which refers to the increase in metabolism (calorie-burning rate) following an intense strength training session.
Benefits of Strength Training
Strength training has many advantages besides simply making you fitter in general. In addition to lowering the risk for many chronic diseases, engaging in regular resistance exercise also promotes a healthy heart, strong bones, a sharp mind, and efficient metabolic function. Here we have listed down the many advantages that strength training can give you to help improve your overall well-being:
- It makes you stronger
This advantage may seem obvious, but it’s important not to discount its importance. Having solid and well-built muscles is very beneficial since they make it easier to go about daily life, and this is especially true as we age and begin to lose muscle mass. You can build and tone your muscles by contracting them against a resisting force, which is why strength training is also known as resistance training. Strength training makes it easier to do everything from running a marathon to carrying groceries up the stairs by forcing your muscles to adapt and grow stronger in response to resistance. And because it aids in the preservation of lean muscle mass, it may be helpful to endurance athletes as well, who rely on speed, power, and strength to compete.
- It helps lower the risk of any unwanted injuries
Incorporating strength training into your fitness regimen will help adjust your body for any strain in order to lower the risk of any injury. Muscle, ligament, and tendon strength, range of motion, and mobility are enhanced by strength training. This can strengthen the area around your most important joints, such as your knees, hips, and ankles, to provide more damage protection. In addition, strength training can aid in the correction of musculoskeletal imbalances.
For instance, having a stronger core, hamstrings, and glutes reduces your chance of lower-back problems by relieving the strain on your lower back during lifting. Lastly, adults and adolescents who engage in strength training have a lower injury risk. A study involving 7,738 athletes shows that strength-training programs cut injury risk by 33%. It was found to reduce injury risk in a dose-dependent way, which means that for every 10% increase in strength-training intensity, there was a 4% reduction in injury risk.
- It helps build stronger bones
Strength training is essential for the proper development of your bones.
Exercises that utilise weights will momentarily stress your bones, signalling bone-building cells to take action and grow stronger. Strong bones lower the likelihood of osteoporosis, fractures, and falls, particularly as you age. At any age, it is possible to receive the bone-strengthening benefits of strength training.
Enhancing bone density is essential for preventing fractures, especially as you age. Strength training stresses the bones, causing them to deposit a denser, more mineralised bone matrix. In addition, when stronger muscles contract, they exert tremendous stress on the bones, signalling the body to deposit more minerals, strengthen the structure of the bones, and form new bone cells.
While most people in their 30s may not be concerned with bone health or disorders like osteoporosis, it is never too early to adopt lifestyle behaviours that promote strong bones. In fact, the majority of people attain their optimum bone mass between the ages of 25 and 30 and begin to steadily lose bone mass at about age 40, with a substantial increase later in life. In the decade following menopause, women can lose up to 40% of their inner bone mass and 10% of their outer bone mass.
- It’s a good method to burn calories
By developing stronger muscles through weightlifting, you increase your body’s ability to burn fat. The explanation is straightforward: muscle tissue consumes more calories than fat tissue. In addition to burning more calories at rest, your metabolism will increase naturally as you gain lean body mass through weight training. However, when performing strength, weight, or resistance training, your body requires more energy proportional to the amount of energy you exert (i.e., the harder you work, the more energy your body needs). Consequently, this effect is proportional to the time and intensity of your workout. This implies that you will burn more calories both during and after your workout while your body recovers and returns to a resting state.
- It refines your Nervous System to promote better muscle control
After beginning a program, some of the most critical and crucial gains in strength training are linked to improvements in brain-muscle communication via nerve impulses. Strength training helps the brain and muscles coordinate their movements so that a more significant number of muscle fibres are activated in response to a brain stimulus. They contract in a more coordinated manner, resulting in more powerful contractions. This can lead to overall enhancements in coordination and muscular control, regardless of whether the task involves sharp motor abilities or larger motor patterns.
- It assists in managing your blood sugar levels
Regular strength-training activities have been demonstrated to improve the condition of your heart and arteries, reduce blood pressure, decrease total and LDL cholesterol, and improve your blood circulation. People are at risk of cardiovascular disease if they have higher than average levels of abdominal fat, also called visceral fat. You boost your cardiovascular health when you replace visceral fat, found in and around vital organs, with lean muscle mass. Working on your strength can help you control your weight and blood sugar levels.
- It helps improve your brain’s strength as well
Brain power can be enhanced by strength training throughout a person’s life, although the results may be highest in older persons with cognitive decline. Resistance exercise improves brain health by encouraging the creation of new brain cells, increasing blood supply to the brain, maintaining synaptic plasticity, which is essential for memory, and protecting existing brain cells from inflammation-induced damage.
At least two weight training sessions per week may improve general cognitive performance, executive function, and working memory in older persons. As cognitive function degrades with age, those who engaged in resistance training at least three times per week for 45-60 minutes demonstrated even more significant increases in cognitive function markers.
- It can increase your self-esteem
Regular resistance exercises will greatly impact your mental health and mood. Multiple studies have demonstrated that strength training can reduce anxiety and improve mood. Strength training causes the release of endorphins, which play a role in enhanced mental health. While any form of exercise is preferable to none, strength training can increase mood through controlled successes. Strength training will help and motivate individuals to push themselves to the next level and then reward them based on accomplishments such as carrying heavier weights, doing more reps, and seeing progress in the mirror. This is a wonderful method to boost one’s attitude and sense of success!
Bottom Line
Everyone, regardless of age, sex, or fitness level, can benefit from regular strength training. However, it is a personal process, and the best training plan for you will vary depending on your specific fitness goals and current overall fitness. Weightlifting is beneficial on numerous levels, from helping you look leaner to actually helping your cells function better. Even if you’ve never lifted before, you can see results after only one session if you take it step by step and pay attention to your body’s needs.
If you or a close friend have been searching for a strength and conditioning gym in Copley, then 1Vigor is the gym you have been looking for! The number 1 pertains to YOU. 1 Life, 1 You, 1 Chance. Believe in yourself and be willing to work tirelessly. Be the most definitive version of yourself. Vigor represents physical and mental fortitude. Life is won when effort, energy, and enthusiasm are combined. Performance-based programming is designed to make you healthier, faster, and stronger. You can dip in and out, select the sessions you desire, or combine this with other training types to help cater to your needs.