The human body is meant to spend the majority of its time moving. We currently spend most of our time being stationary, and this leads to problems such as chronic diseases like metabolic disease, and acute injuries from bone, muscle, and joint weakness. In our current culture, we must use structured exercise to increase the amount of time we spend moving to keep our bodies happy. There are many different types of exercise we can do, and one type is called resistance training. Today we’re going to dive into why incorporating resistance training into our week is so important.

Resistance training, also known as strength training, involves exercises that are designed to improve our strength and endurance by putting a load on our muscles using either our body weight or external weights. This causes the muscles to stretch, tear, and rebuild stronger. We must perform resistance training in order to change the way our body looks, change our body composition, and achieve improvements in strength.

Performing resistance training regularly improves our overall health, including our strength, bone density and joint health, and helps prevent and control chronic diseases like heart disease, arthritis and diabetes. Resistance training also helps prevent injury. The stronger we are, the better our body can function, and the less likely we are to get injured doing everyday tasks.

Did you know that for women, our bone density starts to decrease as early as in our 30s? The more we can stress our bones and our muscles through resistance training, the stronger our bones will be and the less likely we will be to fall or break a bone as we age.

Endorphins are released when we exercise, improving our mood and self-esteem. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being able to lift something that’s heavier than what you could lift before or when you can finally do a pushup or a pullup. Resistance training is a way to prove to yourself that you can do hard things and it releases the hormones that help us feel good.

If you have a goal of losing fat, gaining muscle, or looking more “toned,” you’ll want to incorporate resistance training into your schedule at least three times per week. Looking “toned” comes from having more muscle mass and lowering our body fat percentage. If that is your goal, you have to put on muscle, and the only way to do that is through resistance training. Performing resistance training regularly is not going to make you bulky, so don’t be afraid of that. It takes a lot of work to put on muscle size.

Adding resistance training into your weekly schedule will greatly improve your quality of life. Life is easier when we can pick things up without needing help, and when we can play sports or do activities with our friends or our children without being winded. Resistance training is most commonly thought of as picking up a barbell or using machines at the gym. That just is one form of resistance training using external resistance. You can do resistance training in many ways that do not require you to go to the gym, such as body weight training.

There’s nothing like being able to accomplish something you couldn’t just a few days prior. All types of exercise are great, and we want to include resistance training, cardio, and mobility into our routines. If you’d like to add resistance training to your life and are looking for guidance, send me an email at maggi@calofitnessllc.com and we can work together to come up with the best program for your lifestyle and goals.

Xoxo

Coach Maggi