Some of your goals may be to lose body fat, get more toned, bulk up, get stronger & faster, prevent injuries, or improve performance in sports. I’ll tell you right away what everyone should know about resistance training: Resistance training should be a component in ALL training regiments. If you’re a little skeptical I completely understand but hear me out and let me tell you why.
A simple definition of resistance training is using your skeletal muscles to contract against external forces which are acting on your body. You can train your muscles to get bigger, contract faster, or just burn a ton of calories (a lot of it is fat) for energy. Resistance training builds up skeletal muscle that increases your body’s metabolism because of the heat that muscles produce.
The benefits of resistance training come from repeated muscle contractions working against an opposing force. The body then repairs the worn out muscle while resting. The result is a muscle with added strength and efficiency. Your muscles will grow and get stronger because each individual muscle fiber gets thicker and its ability to contract improves. Tendons and ligaments also get stronger which decreases the chance of injuries. As the muscles increase in size and strength they use up more energy on a consistent level which means that your metabolism will be higher throughout the day. If you increase your metabolism you will be burning calories even when you are resting. The more calories you burn, the more fat is used up as energy!!
I have heard many misconceptions about resistance training. One of my good friends thought that if she lifted too many weights she would automatically get all these huge muscles and lose her girlish figure. Believe me that will not happen unless you are on a serious mission to do that. Women do not have the hormone testosterone that men have in their bodies that allows them to build huge muscles as easily, so that should not be a huge concern. However, women do have the ability to build strength, endurance, neuron efficiency, and get ripped. Your muscle size does not have to be like that of a body builder in order to boost your metabolism and burn a ton of calories.
Some athletes may be hesitant to do resistance training because they believe it will ruin their ability to perform a certain motion that they must do repetitively. For example, a golfer may think that resistance training will stiffen his body up and not allow him to perform the swing that he wants. A long distance runner may think that building muscle will ruin his stamina. The truth is, in daily life, and especially in sports that have repetitive motions, as your body repeats a specific motion it will create muscle imbalances. This means that a muscle on one side of your body is not equal to a muscle on the other side creating an imbalance that can cause a lot of problems throughout the whole body. The most common problems being pain or injuries in the back and joints. Resistance training corrects muscle imbalances and improves technique and mobility in sports.
There are many styles and ways that you can implement resistance training into a daily workout routine, of which I will go into greater depth later on. Most trainers and coaches have their own philosophy to this type of training. When you start a routine, see results and feel how your body reacts, you will come up with your own philosophy for yourself. The science behind resistance training and the benefits that can be reaped do not change.
You now know what everyone should know about resistance training. If you are convinced that this is something that will help you reach some of your health related goals, lets go farther and let me tell you why you also need to workout your heart with cardio training. Take a look at the article The Secret To Successful Cardio Training and find out how it can benefit you. Tweet this article and tag some of your friends that need to hit the weights.
About Adam Pegg
