Why You Should Lift Weights

Why Your Body Loves Strength Training

If there was one thing you could do, that would benefit your heart and cardiovascular health, strengthen your bones and help maintain your muscle recovery, encourage weight loss, and make feel better, and look better? You wouldn’t hesitate to give it a go? I know I wouldn’t! We know how important cardiovascular exercise is for our heart health, and how it helps us lose weight by burning fat and melting those unwanted kilo’s away. As a cardio lover I still believe that cardiovascular exercise is only half the equation. For a balanced exercise and fitness program, strength training is essential. Although most of us think it’s only for bodybuilders, strength training can actually benefit people of all ages. Not only will strength training improve the health of your heart, strengthen your bones and help you lose weight; it has a number of other health benefits!

This Why Your Body Loves Strength Training

Protection against bone health and muscle mass As we get age, starting as early as puberty, we, especially us woman, start to lose bone and muscle density strength at quite a rapid rate. At about 1 percent every year. We all that consume dairy products can help us build and maintain healthy strong bones, but strength training will do the same thing! How: Well strength training uses resistance to create muscular contraction. When this happens, it puts our muscles under stress. The strength, anaerobic endurance and size of our skeletal muscles improves when under pressure and stress. Strength training therefore stimulates bone formation. Strength training prevents bone and muscle loss. Helps maintain weight loss Strength training helps us lose those unwanted kilo’s sitting around our waist. Strength training also helps maintain that weight loss, too. A recent study by researchers at the University of Alabama concluded that that weight-training helps women burn more calories throughout the day, compared to cardiovascular training alone. With an increased metabolism and rate of burning calories, we are more likely to sustain weight loss. (1) Alwyn Cosgrove, a fitness expert contributed an article discussing the Hierarchy of Weight Loss. In his article he highlighted the benefits of weight training in comparison to cardio on weight loss. Overweight participants were allocated to one of three groups: 1. Diet-only 2. Diet plus a cardio fitness program 3. Diet plus an aerobics and weights based fitness program Training was three times a week starting at 30 minutes. At the end of the 12 week trial, the diet group lost an average of 6.6kg of fat. The cardio only group lost an average of 7.7kg. The weight training group lost 9.6kgs of fat; that’s 44% and 35% more than the diet and cardio only groups respectively. Cosgrove concluded the addition of aerobic training did not result in any significant fat loss over dieting alone. However, the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated fat loss results. (2) (1) 7 Reasons to Add Strength Training to Your Workout Routine By Chris Iliades, MD | Medically reviewed by Pat F. Bass III, MD, MPH 29/1/2015 (2) The Hierarchy of Fat Loss by Alwyn Cosgrove 04/11/07 Contributed by: Tammy Kacev

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