People automatically envision strength training as just a way to build huge biceps and muscles. While you can build up some great guns from weight training—don’t worry ladies, it’s almost impossible for you to do it—the importance of strength training comes from the other benefits it brings your workout. Strength training is one way to help reduce your chances of injury. It helps strengthen the tendons, ligaments, muscles and even bones to support the body in alignment. The ligaments and tendons become more flexible, so they can do their job better. If there’s an imbalance, it helps correct it with the proper guidance.
Strength training is a form of load bearing exercise, so it offers benefits to help prevent osteoporosis.
The more weight bearing exercises you do, the more the body will boost your bone density. Normally, as you age, bone mass decreases. Weight lifting can actually slow it and even reverse that loss. A year long study showed that women who did strength training just three days a week showed an increase in bone density. The more weight they lifted, the bigger the gain in density. There are numerous studies show that bone mass density loss will slow or even reverse with weight training. Several studies show that it works better than some of the medicine made for osteoporosis and the only side effect is a healthier body.
It adds muscle tissue, which helps boost your metabolism.
Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does, so the more you have, the more calories you burn 24/7. According to a study from Boston University published in 2008, the type of muscle tissue built by weight lifting is very important. It’s type II muscle fibers, which boost metabolism. The study with mice showed that the more type II muscle fibers the mice had, the more weight they lost, even if their diet never changed.
Weight lifting and strength training can lower your risk of diabetes.
It’s not a secret that a healthy diet and regular exercise can help lower the risk of Type II diabetes and even help control it. However, weight lifting and strength training can play a very important role in that risk reduction. The National Institute of Health funded a study that showed that adding five 30 minutes of weight training to regular cardio lowered the risk of diabetes by 59 percent.
- Weight training can help reduce back pain and the risk of back injury. Sitting to long all day can increase back pain, adding weight training improve the muscle tone to support the spine.
- Weight training improves balance, which is another reason it’s excellent for seniors.
- While endurance athletes tend to build red muscles, which uses fat oxidation for energy, people who use strength training tend to build more white muscles. White muscle tissue uses glucose for energy, which means it helps to control blood sugar levels.
- Department of Health, Leisure and Exercise Science in the College of Health Sciences at Appalachian State University did a study that found 45 minutes of moderate-intensity strength training decrease blood pressure 20 percent, which was equal or better to the results of taking drugs created to lower blood pressure.