Besides the benefit of adding tone and definition to your muscles, how does strength training help? Here are just a few of the many ways:
1. Strength Training Makes You Stronger and Fitter
Muscle strength is crucial in making it easier to do the things you need to do on a day-to-day basis. Strength training is also called resistance training because it involves strengthening and toning your muscles by contracting them against a resisting force.
- Isometric resistance involves contracting your muscles against a nonmoving object, such as against the floor in a pushup.
- Isotonic strength training involves contracting your muscles through a range of motion, as in weight lifting.
2. Strength Training Protects Bone Health and Muscle Mass
At around age 30 we start losing as much as 3 to 5 percent of lean muscle mass per decade thanks to ageing… just 30 minutes twice a week of high intensity resistance and impact training was shown to improve functional performance, as well as bone density, structure, and strength in postmenopausal women with low bone mass — and it had no negative effects.
3. Strength Training Helps Your Body Burn Calories Efficiently
All exercise helps boost your metabolism (the rate your resting body burns calories throughout the day).
With both aerobic activity and strength training, your body continues to burn calories after strength training as it returns to its more restful state.
But when you do strength, weight, or resistance training, your body demands more energy based on how much energy you’re exerting (meaning the tougher you’re working, the more energy is demanded). So you can amplify this effect depending on the amount of energy you put into the workout. That means more calories burned during the workout, and more calories burned after the workout, too, while your body is recovering to a resting state.
4. Strength Training Helps Keep the Weight off for Good
Because strength training boosts excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, it can also help exercisers boost weight loss more than if you were to just do aerobic exercise alone. That’s because lean tissue in general is more active tissue.
You may even be able to further reduce body fat specifically when strength training is combined with reducing calories through diet. People who followed a combined full-body resistance training and diet over the course of four months reduced their fat mass while improving lean muscle mass better than either resistance training or dieting alone.
5. Strength Training Helps You Develop Better Body Mechanics
Strength training also benefits your balance, coordination, and posture, according to past research.
6. Strength Training Can Help With Chronic Disease Management
Studies have documented that strength training can also help ease symptoms in people with many chronic conditions, including neuromuscular disorders, HIV, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and some cancers, among others.
7. Strength Training Boosts Energy Levels and Improves Your Mood
All exercise boosts mood because it increases endorphins, and there’s evidence strength training may help you sleep better, too!
8. Strength Training Has Cardiovascular Health Benefits
Along with aerobic exercise, muscle-strengthening activities helps improve blood pressure and reduce risk of hypertension and heart disease.
