Most people when they think of weight training think of bodybuilding, huge muscles and being at the gym for hours on end. Well, its time to forget these old associations and look at what resistance training has shown to offer. Todays exercise science shows that weight training is potentially the best exercise you can do for your physical function and fitness-whether this be with barbells, dumbbells or your own bodyweight.
There has been numerous research studies conducted over the years that have exposed what weight training can do for your health, from improving circulation and decreasing the likelihood of cardiovascular disease developing, to helping those with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.
“Just like in bodybuilding, failure is also a necessary experience for growth in our own lives, for if we’re never tested to our limits, how will we know how strong we really are? How will we ever grow?” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold nailed this quote years ago by relating weight training in the gym to the struggles of life that we still face today. Whether it be in our career, school or university, if were not pushed to our limits with small amounts of stressed placed upon us, how will we ever grow and build the characteristics that weight training can also give us such as pride, good work ethic, and accountability.
To me, weight training offers much more than the feeling of achievement and knowing that I’m improving my muscular strength, it offers the opportunity to be social. Those with depression become more self-confident. It helps those with anxiety become more confident. It gives you more energy when you feel fatigued from a long hard day of work when you may be mentally fried and would like nothing else but to crawl into bed and sleep for hours and hours.
Resistance training can benefit almost all chronic conditions believe it or not. Those with skeletal conditions such as osteoporosis or osteopenia it helps the body go through a process known as remodelling-a process where old matured bone tissue is removed and replaced with new bone tissue.
Its been linked to improving insulin sensitivity among those with diabetes and pre diabetes. Your muscles are metabolically active meaning that they use glucose (blood sugar) as energy.
For those with cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension or arrhythmia’s, resistance training can decrease blood pressure from hypertensive to normotensive in just one session. If thats not enough evidence, those that have already gone through a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or cardiac surgery, you’ll be expected to undertake resistance training as apart of your cardiac rehabilitation.
There are many other benefits of exercise on chronic conditions like anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, menopause, arthritis, obesity, thyroid conditions and joint replacements.
Weight training doesn’t mean lifting the heaviest weight in the gyn on the first day. Done right, its one of the safest sports or recreational activities you can participate in. You have to start light and learn technique first and only after you have achieved this you can move on to the next weight above that. You may not even start with a weight at all. Learning how to control your own body-weight initially in strength movements is the base of weight training and cannot be skipped.
The pros outweigh the cons when it comes to weight training and you can’t lose in trying it. See one of our Exercise Physiologists today if you wanting to improve your health and fitness as well as become a more active and energised person.
If you’d like to find out how weight lifting can benefit you or you’d like to get started with weight lifting or resistance training, click here.