The Benefits of Strength Training For Your Body

Strength training involves exercise which improves your strength and endurance. Whilst often associated with free weights, strength training can also involve a myriad of equipment and types of exercise. It's vital to improving our body’s fitness and daily functioning. Cardio is not enough alone, even if you just want to lose weight and the best exercise routines often combine the two.

It is important to be able to exercise in a way that is non-injurious to your body and use the best techniques for what you want to achieve. You can check out this Very Well Fit beginners guide and some further tips here, to make those gains go further by making your workouts more effective.

Below are just seven ways in which strength training improves fitness, but there are many more which you will feel and see once you include strength training in your workouts.

Improves Muscles

Strength or resistance training involves strengthening and toning your muscles. This is crucial to enable us to do day to day things more easily.

Protects Bone Health and Muscle Mass

Muscle-strengthening activities help to preserve or increase muscle mass, strength, and power, which are essential for bone, joint, and muscle health as we age. Research has shown high-intensity resistance training improves functional performance, bone density, structure, and strength in postmenopausal women with low bone mass.

Helps Us To Lose Weight

Whilst cardio helps burn calories, strength training can help us lose weight more sustainably in the long term as it helps increase our resting metabolism. This is the rate at which our body burns calories throughout the day. It also keeps our metabolism more active after exercising, compared to aerobic, or cardio, workout.

Better Body Mechanics

Strength training can help you with balance, posture, and coordination, which becomes increasingly important with age, as it can reduce the risk of falling and hurting ourselves.

Chronic Disease Management

Strength training can be a form of coping with arthritis pain for arthritis sufferers and glucose control for people with type 2 diabetes. It also combats other conditions that can be exacerbated by an unhealthy lifestyle.

Elevates Mood

All workouts release endorphins, which boosts energy and mood levels, but research on strength training, in particular, shows an additional positive effect on the brain. It may also help us sleep better.

Cardiovascular Health

Strength training helps our blood pressure, reduces hypertension, and lowers the risk of heart disease.

For more information, please visit Everyday Health.