Lose Fat And Control Your Weight
There are many reasons to strength train or do resistance training. One advantage resistance training offers is a leaner body. Maintaining or increasing muscle mass preserves your ability to burn greater numbers of calories. Your body is operating at a higher metabolic rate and it’s easier to maintain or lose weight.
Strength training may be the most important exercise you can do for losing fat and maintaining weight, because it can increase your metabolism. Don’t throw away your running and walking shoes just yet. Even though biking, running and dance aerobics do not develop muscle to any great extent, aerobic training is still important for cardiorespiratory health and weight control. But one of the biggest reasons people gain weight is because they lose muscle mass as they get older.
Metabolism refers to the number of calories you’re burning whether sleeping, watching TV or exercising vigorously. Metabolism slows with age, but the bulk of the decrease has nothing to do with getting older. It seems to be caused mostly by physical inactivity. You can lose 1% of your muscle annully if you don’t exercise, which means from the age of 30-75 you can loose 45% of your muscle! If you only do cardiovascuar workouts like running, walking and biking, you will still lose the same amount of muscle over a given period of time. The key to avoiding muscle loss is to strength train! Key point: Increase muscle and you’ll burn more calories naturally-24 hours per day-even at rest! This will help you lose fat and maintain weight loss.
You burn calories during and after lifing. Strength training increases your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) at rest because it causes an increase in lean muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is very “metabolically active” Muscle is like Pac Man, it gobbles up lots of the calories to maintain itself, unlike fat, which requires almost no calories to exist. Muscle make you a calorie “waster,” which mean you burn more calories that won’t be stored as fat. Bottom line: increasing or maintaining your muscle mass will help you burn more calories and keep the fat off!
Improve Your Personal Appearance
We all like to be pleased with what we see in the mirror. Regardless of how you think you look, self-acceptance is important.
Strength training does some good things for your image that cardiovascular training can’t. It shapes, strengthens, builds and develops muscle. This has a direct impact on how you look. For example your padded shoulders are not the result of muscles being developed, a caved in chest now looks strong, full and expanded, and your sleeveless dress shirt shows off tone where, “flappies of fat” used to hang from the back of your arms. Though you can’t spot-reduce (selectively cause fat to disappear from a particular body part, you can spot build. Key point: strong muscles help to maintain an erect posture and could eliminate many orthopedic problems assoiated with the back, hip and kness. Resistance training can do more to reshape your body than any other type of training.
Get Stronger And Reduce Your Risk Of Injury
Strong muscles will make you less likely to get hurt. With strong muscles come strong ligaments, (they support your joints) and strong tendons (they support muscles to bone).
What this means is that you have margin for error. For example, if you stumble or lose your balance there’s a good chance you can right yourself without falling or hurting yourself, or straining a muscle. Key point: Resistance training provides a good “armor” for the body during cardiovascular workouts. Strong and resilient musles, bones, tendons, ligaments and cartilage protect the joints fro potential injury in all kinds of daily and recreational activity.
Keep Strong, Healthy Bones
Millions of the world’s population have osteoporosis, which is a disease that cripples by weakening bones. Bone loss can lead to fractures in the hip, back and wrist. Fracture complications can result in complete inactivity and an astonishing decrease in personal well-being. Don’t think you have to fall to break a weak bone. A quick turn of the head can break a vertebrae or catching your balance after a slip can fracture a hip that is weakened by osteoporosis. Stong bones are solid and dense, like a strong slab or oak. diseased bones look like porous sponge and easily break when stressed.
Strong muscles mean strong bones. When you contract your muscles by lifting weights, the point at which the muscle attach to the bone are positively stressed. These attachment points atually pull on the bone when the muscle contracts. This is what keeps your bones strong, along with adequate nutrition. Complete inactivity is a “killer” that contributes to weak and unhealthy bones. Key Point: Bones and muscle deteriorate with age and especially inactivity. The best way to strengthen the bones is to stimulate the muscles that pull on them, eat a healthy diet and to participate in weight-bearing and a low impact activity.
Stay Healthy
Strength training can lower your blood pressure if it’s high and reduce your risk for diabetes and some types of cancer. It can also lower your risk for heart disease by increasing, “good cholesterol’ and decreasing “bad cholesterol”
Best Tip:
The best way to reach all of the above goals is to hire a Certified Fitness Trainer.