Trying to lose a few pounds, but the scale won't budge? Try adding more weight-at the gym. Weight training-using free weights or weight machines to build muscle-is a type of strength training that not only can help you slim down, but also can gain you a ton of other health benefits. The best part: You don't have to spend all your time in the weight room.
You can even do it at home, without fancy equipment. Here's why weight training may be what you need to get the scale moving in the right direction, plus a few tips and moves to get you started. It's really pretty simple: Weight training builds muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat-up to three times more , according to some estimates.
It doesn't end after you leave the gym either. Your body is still torching calories for the next 24 to 48 hours as it works to repair stressed muscle tissues.
That's known as the afterburn effect, another name for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption EPOC. The more oxygen you use both during and after a workout, the greater the EPOC.
Additionally, studies have shown that strength training can dramatically reduce arthritis pain. As a final warning, living a sedentary lifestyle is bad for people of any age, but the risks of being inactive increase exponentially as we grow older. The only way to maximize your energy, mobility and health is to get up, get out and get active. As you know by now, strength training improves your balance and coordination, and improves bone density, which becomes increasingly important as we age.
There are more health benefits however. Strength training naturally improves posture, helps you sleep better, reduces sleep apnea and can decrease or eliminate aches and pains. Building muscle requires oxygen. As you train, your body becomes more efficient at providing this oxygen to your system. This means improved circulation, a stronger heart, and improved resting blood pressure. Additionally, this process helps to reduce cholesterol. Strength training also improves insulin sensitivity, which helps you better maintain blood sugar levels.
This directly fights the effects of Type 2 Diabetes, and can be powerful enough in some cases to reduce or eliminate the need for medication. Maintaining a regular strength training routine will keep you strong, resilient and agile, reducing the risk of injuries in your daily life. While mental challenges train your mind to handle new and complicated problems, physical exercise is what gives your mind the raw power to tackle those challenges.
Strength training has been proven to have powerful positive effects on brain health and cognitive function. In addition to helping keep your cheese on your cracker, heavy strength training can actually improve your mental pathways and nervous system.
A recent study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that when you use heavier resistance, your brain develops stronger neural connections to drive your muscles.
This allows you to use your muscles more effectively, and thereby perform harder tasks. Or perhaps your motivation is weight loss , so you feel that adding extra muscle would take away from your results.
If so, you should know that strength training does not necessarily result in adding extra bulk. As noted above, body builders typically eat tremendous amounts of calories every day in order to bulk up and gain weight in muscle. As for other sports, many fitness experts recommend cross training — that is, mixing other forms of exercise with your chosen specialty.
This is partially because our bodies need rest from constantly doing the same thing, and partially because we need balance to stay healthy. Strength training can actually be a powerful boost for your game. As noted above, heavy lifting directly improves the pathways between your brain and your muscle fibers, increasing the maximum effort you can exert. Now You Know. Latest Fitness. Get Daily Fitness Inspiration Right in your inbox. Customize Select the topics that interest you:.
Working Out. Up until now, the link between strength training and fat loss has been unclear. Studies have investigated this link in the past, but their sample sizes tend to be small -- a side effect of not many people wanting to volunteer to exercise for months on end. Smaller sample sizes can make it difficult to find statistically significant results, especially as many bodies can respond differently to exercise programs.
Dr Hagstrom and her team pulled together the findings from 58 research papers that used highly accurate forms of body fat measurement like body scans, which can differentiate fat mass from lean mass to measure the outcomes from strength training programs.
Altogether, the studies included participants, none of which had any previous weight training experience. While the strength training programs differed between the studies, the participants worked out for roughly minutes each session for an average of 2.
The programs lasted for about five months. The team found that, on average, the participants lost 1. Part of the reason many people think strength training doesn't live up to cardio in terms of fat loss comes down to inaccurate ways of measuring fat. For example, many people focus on the number they see on the scale -- that is, their total body weight.
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