When most people think of weight lifters, they think of cultural icons like The Rock or Arnold Schwarzenegger: Huge, muscular men that spend all day in the gym. And when most people think of exercise, that is the exact opposite of what they want.
However, I am going to talk to you today of why I think more people should use weight training as their main form of physical activity, as the benefits are enormous.
Increased Bone Density
Weight lifting will increase your bone density and help prevent problems like osteoporosis or stress fractures.
A lot of people think that running is the best exercise to increase bone density, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, as an aerobic activity, running actually promotes muscle breakdown, while weight lifting, being an anabolic process, promotes the building of muscle tissue.
Because of this, weight lifting is far better at conserving your bone density, as well as having far less impact on your body than running.
Fewer Injuries
When you weight lift, your muscles are getting stronger, and you're working the ligaments and tendons that connect muscles, bones and other tissues. This reduces the possibility of injury while participating in of physical activity.
Those of you who have been injured before know disheartening it can be. The fact is, more than 75% of injuries are a direct result of a tendon, ligament or muscle being too weak when a stressful force is applied. Since weight lifting works all of those ligaments and tendons, it's one of the best injury preventions out there.
Reduced Health Related Risks
Studies have shown that consistent weight lifting can have a beneficial effect on health by reducing the rate of insulin resistance, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. A strong weight training program along with a healthy diet is a big step in avoiding some of these problems.
Reduced Fat Gain
As you weight train more often, your metabolic rate will rise, and you will be able to eat more while maintaining your weight. If that doesn't motivate you to use weight training to help shed those pounds, I don't know what will.
That being said, one common misconception people have is that weight training will make you big and bulky. That is not the case at all. Let's make a comparison to help us understand how this works.
Say you have two teams, and each are going to build a house using the exact same method. Team one is given 5,000 bricks to work with, while team two has only 500 bricks.
Who do you think will build a bigger house? Clearly, team one, as they have been supplied with more materials. Now think of those bricks as the calories that you consume on a daily basic. Unless you eat a lot of calories, you aren't going to build big, bulky muscles. This is exactly why bodybuilders look the way they do.
It has much more to do with what they eat than with how they train. In order to sustain the kind of growth needed for this kind of muscle you would need to eat like a teenage boy.
You need raw materials to build a house, and you need raw materials to build your muscles. If you control your diet, you will not develop large, bulky muscles from weight training.
Instead, you will burn more fat, reduce your chances of injury, and develop a strong, slim body. Choosing to exclude weight training from your workout plan is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Don't pass up these long-term health benefits any longer.
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