Research has shown the weight training, weight lifting and or strength training, has enormous effects on the muscular skeletal system, enhances the maintenance of functional abilities, helps prevent osteoporosis, sarcopenia (loss of body mass), low back pain, and other disabilities.

Strength training also contributes to muscle conditioning. Conditioning muscles is essential to overall stability and the strength of the body. A strong body provides many benefits all through out life. Maintaining strong muscles also aids in maintaining stronger, healthier bones, tendons and connective tissues.

Your posture or the ways you sit and stand reflect the health of the muscles and bones that keep you upright. Strengthening those muscles and bones will enable to sit and stand more comfortably.

Many people, particularly women, fear strength training believing they will experience dramatic gains in muscle size making them look more like men. This just is not so. Men and women have different hormones that govern how muscles respond to strength training. The male hormone testosterone is key to building large muscles. Women simply lack sufficient levels of testosterone to “bulk up”. Instead you’ll gain longer more shapely muscles that can also be much stronger.

Clinical studies have shown that strength training is a keep ingredient in managing stress. A regular exercise routine that incorporates strength training will result in better deep sleep in addition to handling stress more readily.

Strength training like most forms of exercise raises the metabolic rate thus burning more calories. It will aid in maintaining the proper weight with less body fat. As your routine progresses, you may lose weight, but you’ll lose inches. Muscle is denser thus heavier than fat. Over time you should notice decreases in waist measurements and body fat measurement.

A comprehensive strength training program will pay off in many ways. You will look healthier, feel stronger, improve your immune system, maintain muscle mass and bone density. You will elevate your metabolism both while exercising and for the balance of the day thus burning even more calories.

Consult with your doctor if you want to make weight lifting a daily part of your fitness regimen.

References:

“Testosterone Training”. Chris Thibaudeau . How to maximize the effects of your own serum testosterone and how to increase it naturally.

“Testosterone therapy: The answer for aging men?” Mens Health, The Mayo Clinic. Com – It’s a fact of life – as men age, the level of testosterone in their bodies decrease. But does this hormonal decline require treatment? The debate continues.