10 Compelling Reasons To Start Strength Training

strength training

Are you anxious or depressed?

Is your energy low?

Are you having trouble sleeping or struggling with a chronic disease?

What if I told you that there was something simple you can do to improve any or all of those challenges—and much more?

There is.

Strength Training To The Rescue

Strength training is just what is needed to bring vitality back into your mind and body and to oust a host of things that are spiraling out of your control. It possesses the amazing ability to resolve dysfunction and reverse aging.

“Jack LaLanne performed strength and cardiovascular training up until the day before he passed away at the ripe age of 94. And if you want to be able to move with passion and purpose until the day you die, strength training is an absolute must.” – Men’s Health

Here’s what it can do for you:

1. Strength Training Increases Your Active Lifespan

Strength training trumps all other forms of exercise. A 2014 study at UCLA showed that the more muscle mass you have the lower your risk of death. This is something that older adults should pay special attention to.

This study (and this one) reveals that strength training dramatically restores more youthful genetic expression in aging mitochondria and promotes longer, more durable telomeres. Protecting the telomeres from damage is important because increased wear and tear on them leaves the chromosomes unprotected and causes premature cell death.

The PLOS | ONE study noted that “genes that were down-regulated with age were correspondingly up-regulated with exercise, while genes that were up-regulated with age, were down-regulated with exercise.”

“The main, novel finding is that we could bring that aging mitochondria pattern back towards a younger person, almost reversing the aging signature, pretty much by 40—45 years with six months of weight training.” – Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky

These studies are huge! They give us an astonishing peek into the process of aging and offer each of us a sip from a youth-preserving and youth-restoring fountain.

So yes, it’s true: pumping iron can slow—even reverse—aging and increase your lifespan!

2. Strength Training Brightens Your Mood

Strength training boosts your endorphins naturally and makes you feel great. It can also help with anxiety and depression.

It increases your confidence and presents you with a superior picture of your appearance, abilities, and personality.

3. Strength Training Quickens Your Mind

Ample research indicates that resistance training requires an increase in brain function and tunes up the nervous system. This improves focus, heightens insight, and attunes coordination of movement. A practical way to increase cognitive function in older adults is welcome information for those who are struggling. Evidence supports the conclusion that strength training not only supports the mind in many ways, but health in general. Which brings us to our next point.

4. Strength Training Thwarts Dysfunction

A plethora of health benefits are the result of resistance training:

  • Arthritis responds to strength training as well as it does to medication, with beneficial side effects such as less weight on beleaguered joints.
  • Consistent strength training can increase bone density* and, among other things, prevent osteoporosis and effectively decrease falls in older people by 30%.
  • Studies show that those who weight train have better blood sugar control. This is because an increase in muscle tissue pulls more glucose from the blood stream, controlling blood sugar spikes and helping to prevent diabetes.
  • Resistance training improves cardiovascular function and reduces blood pressure by strengthening the heart and allowing it to beat more efficiently. Its effect on hypertension has in some cases been shown** to be as effective as taking medication. Weightlifting aids in reducing the abdominal and organ encircling fat that has been connected to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
  • Research has demonstrated that strength training increases low back strength and eases low back pain.
  • As with aerobic exorcise, strength training decreases colds and illness.

5. Strength Training Jumpstarts Your Strength and Fitness

Because strength training improves your capacity for work (harder and longer), it improves your ability to do everyday tasks. It does this by:

  • Strengthening your muscles, bones, joints, ligaments and tendons
  • Halting and reversing the muscle loss we experience as we age. It boosts the activation of the motor units within muscle tissue even if there is no increase in muscle mass. Research supports this again and again.
  • Increasing nervous system connections to skeletal muscle. It activates the motor units in muscle tissue even if there is no increase in muscle mass.
  • Increasing range of motion
  • Increasing lung function

Weight lifting goes far beyond making everyday tasks easier though. The grand payoff is that, in the end, it prevents serious injury.

6. Weight Training Chisels Your Shape

The more muscle mass you have, the less body fat you’ll have. Add to this the fact that when your muscles get bigger your skin gets tauter and firmer. When this happens, muscle by muscle, throughout your body, then you will be able to optimize your symmetry and proportion to become your best looking self. Whether your 25 or 85, feeling good about your body is never a bad thing.

7. Strength Training Fine Tunes Your Body Mechanics

Scientists have found that strength training improves your posture. It also maintains your balance, flexibility, and coordination as you age, reducing your risk of falling by as much as 30 percent.

8. Strength Training Stops Your Muscle Loss

One of the most important benefits of resistance training is that it halts the muscle loss that begins to happen to all of us in our 40s. It boosts the activation of the motor units within muscle tissue even if there is no increase in muscle mass.

9. Strength Training Boosts Your Energy and Optimizes Your Weight

Recently, several studies have reinforced our long-standing understanding that strength training increases metabolism in three ways:

  • Resistance training builds more muscle. Muscle burns a much higher percentage of calories at rest than other tissue, so more muscle gives you a higher metabolism.
  • Muscle can store more fuel for quick energy production, calories that would otherwise be stored as fat.
  • Strength trained muscles develop a higher density of capillaries which improve circulation and recovery time.

10. Strength Training Puts You To Sleep

Most of us have heard that exercise can improve sleep patterns, but some studies also suggest that resistance training in particular can give you a better night’s sleep.

Strenght Training Increases Your Function, Regardless of Age

The widespread conclusions that many have come to about weight training have been strikingly misleading. Strength training is not just for young bucks. We now know that everyone who participates will experience striking functional increases that dramatically impact everyday life. 

I haven’t included weight training in the my top 4 healing elixirs of healing by accident. It is so critical for a long healthy life that all should participate, starting in youth and continuing into old age. The old are the ones who will benefit the most. You’re never too old to strength train! Strength training has turned life around for many people, and it can turn it around for you. No matter when you start.

Do It Today

Transforming your life with weight training starts with deciding to do it. You can do it in half an hour, two or three times a week. Don’t know how? Buy a book, or hire a personal trainer. Do it today! You’ll be forever glad you did. There are very few things you can do that will so radically transform how you feel and how you look as weight training.

Strength training has turned life around for many people, and it can turn it around for you. Again, you’re never to old to start. You’ll be forever glad you did.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9927006

** http://www.news.appstate.edu/2010/11/29/study-shows-resistance-training-benefits-cardiovascular-health

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