Five Reasons Why You Should Strength Train
In order to invest time in something for me its important to understand the WHY behind it.
Here are 5 reasons strength training is a worthwhile investment-
1, Increased Bone Density
Osteoporosis is something that we all are susceptible to as we age. Your skeleton is the superstructure of your body and naturally over time the mass of your bones decreases. With this decrease comes an increase in the risk of fractures. This is even more acute in early post menopausal women.
Strength training sends signals to your body to increase bone density and help reverse this decline.
2, Increased Muscle Mass
Another factor of ageing is progressively over time loosing muscle mass. Even without any training we naturally reach a peak in our mid to late 20’s. From then on it gradually deceases slightly every year and tends to hit a tipping point for most people in their mid to late 40’s (the dreaded middle age spread!) where the metabolism has slowed quite a bit. Consequently it becomes much easier to put on body fat. Increasing your muscle mass helps keep your energy demands higher even when resting and also provides a whole host of other positive knock on effects on your hormones, metabolism and even gene expression.
3, Improved Coordination & Balance
Strength training is a practice of resisting gravity, be it through the use of barbells, dumbbells or even just your bodyweight. In order to perform these exercises you have to practice coordination & balance. This helps protect you against falls, especially in the elderly population. When factored in with increased bone density and muscle mass this is a triad of benefits that help make your body more resilient to injury.
4, Improved Cardiovascular Health
Your heart is made of muscle and studies have shown that strength training can help improve you strength of your heart. This is applicable both to healthy adults and people who have already experienced heart attack or stroke. Strength training improves the balance in myocardial oxygen supply and demand and systolic blood pressure. Current research points to a combination of strength & cardiovascular training to be best to optimise heart health.
https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00005768-201903000-00014
5, Reduced Waist Line & Viceral Fat
Storing body fat around your waistline which involves also storing it as visceral fat around the organs is associated with numerous negative health consequences. A 12 year study on a cohort of 10,500 men showed that time spent resistance training is more effective at reducing body fat stored around the wasting when compared to same amount of time doing aerobic training. This will be due to a combination of improved energy demand at rest and positive effects on energy utilisation.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.20949
