Mia
You’ve probably heard at least one person mention resistance training. As a repetitive, muscle-building workout, resistance training has many health benefits for those who know how to properly train for it. With the help of a coach or trainer, this workout is a great way to build muscle, improve your health, and try out a new routine.
If you need a few more reasons before you start a new workout regime, here are just a few of the reasons why you should try resistance training and how it helps you stay healthy.
#1. It Reduces Your Risk of Injury
Resistance training helps build up muscle and keep your body in shape. While resistance training does do a lot to help you improve your muscle mass, it doesn’t only focus on your muscles. During each workout, the exercises build on each other and strengthen both muscles and connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments.
Strong connective tissue is what helps reduce your risk of injury, not stronger muscles. When your body has strong connective tissues to protect vital organs and bones, you’re less likely to sustain major injuries from minor incidents.
#2. It Helps With Pain Management
For those who suffer from chronic pain or pain from a recent injury or surgery, exercise is often recommended as a way to help with pain management. As your emotional state can have an impact on pain, it’s important to also take care of that and not just force yourself to exercise or take medicine to manage pain.
If you’re getting a bit of routine exercise every week, your mental and physical health are bound to improve. While this won’t solve what’s causing the pain, it can help you manage it. If your pain is caused by a recent injury, exercise can help you build up strength in the weakened area so that you’re less likely to get hurt again and can start regaining the strength you had before.
#3. It Burns Calories
Many people turn to cardio exercises when they want to burn calories, but resistance training is a great way to burn calories and improve your cardio without taking to the treadmill.
If you’re looking for a workout that will get your heart pumping, burn calories, and shed fat, resistance training is the perfect way to go. It will also help increase your metabolism so that the food you eat is used as fuel rather than just stored somewhere in your body.
#4. It Improves Your Mental Health
Exercise, in general, will help you keep a clearer mind and stay mentally healthy, but a recent Harvard study has shown that resistance training, in particular, has a positive impact on mental health.
By performing resistance training only twice a week, those who suffered from mild or moderate depression saw their symptoms reduced. The same study also concluded that those with severe depression may benefit even further from resistance training.
Even if you don’t suffer from depression, having a way to help manage and improve your mental health is important. It can be a great way to help keep depressive symptoms at bay and having the habit of working out will make it easier to continue when you do have bad days.
#5. It Increases Your Self-Esteem
Having a healthy body will help you feel more confident in yourself and what you can do. When you know you have the strength to complete daily chores and your body feels healthy, you’ll see an improvement in your own self-confidence.
#6. It Helps Your Posture
When you practice resistance training, it’s important to have good posture or you may end up hurting yourself rather than building strength. The workout itself helps build up your core and with a strong core, you’ll be able to keep good posture all day long.
Resistance training requires you to have a strong core that will keep your back straight. When you return to work where you may sit hunched over a desk all day, having a strong and straight core will help you improve your posture even while you sit secluded in your office.
#7. It Can Improve Your Quality of Sleep
Any form of exercise can help you sleep better, but resistance training will especially help. As you work out various muscle and tissue groups in your body, your body has to work hard. When you finally turn in for the night, your body will have a lot to catch up on which means you’re much more likely to get a good night’s rest.
While you rest, your body is recovering and preparing for the next day ahead. It’s building from your workout and it needs you to get a good, long night of sleep. As such, you can expect to sleep better than usual after any resistance training session.
#8. It Reduces Stress
When you do resistance training, your body releases endorphins. You may recognize endorphins as a sort of “happy chemical” as they work to reduce stress factors and can help you respond better in difficult or stressful situations. Resistance training also acts as an outlet for stress or anxiety, further helping to reduce symptoms of stress.
All types of exercise can be great for stress relief. Whether you practice resistance training twice a week or you go for a daily run, getting exercise in any form will help you destress.
Get the Most From Your Workout
Many people think that in order for a workout to be beneficial, they have to do it everyday. However, this is not the case. Doing a certain workout twice a week and mixing in other forms of exercise will help benefit your body in more ways than doing the same workout every single day.
When it comes to resistance training, two times a week is enough to be beneficial. Alternating between resistance training and some other form of exercises such as cardio or yoga can further help improve your health, reduce stress, and strengthen your body in different ways.
