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The Benefits of Weight Lifting

The Benefits of Weight Lifting

Some people believe that weight lifting is just for bodybuilders and pro athletes and that it is only useful to build muscles, get in shape, and blast everything that comes your way. However, scientists say that weight lifting offers many benefits other than stronger muscles and a toned body. It influences your overall health, burns fat, strengthens bones, maintains body balance, improves mental health, and makes your heart healthier. 

Analyzing the importance of strength exercises and weight lifting in overall human health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends that adults should add moderate or intense muscle-strengthening activities into their workouts two days a week. From this recommendation, you can easily explore the importance of weight lifting for your health.

Keep reading the article, and we will show you eight incredible benefits of weight lifting on your overall health. Lets dive in!

  • Burn More Fat:

  • Weight lifting boosts your metabolism and increases the burning rate of fat and calories. The body demands energy based on the intensity of work. In weight lifting, you exert a considerable amount of energy. Hence, the body burns calories to get the desired energy. The calories either come from eaten food or stored body fat. In a calorie deficit, your body will burn body fat for fuel. In addition, people who walk lose more weight than people who lifted weights only. Why is this? It is because there are additional calories burned while walking that must come from food energy or stored fat energy. In a calorie deficit, the energy is taken from body fat. Adding walking to your strength training program is a great way to burn additional calories without spiking hunger. 

  • Strengthen Your Bones and Joints:

  • It doesn’t only increase your muscle strength, it dramatically strengthens your bones and joints as well. This added strength and stability helps prevent you from severe injuries. Further, it is helpful in old age as bone density starts to decrease after 30 years of age. However, if you lift weights regularly, your bone density will be higher, and your bones will be stronger in old age than other individuals of the same age. This benefit is significant for women as they lose a significant amount of bone density by age 60 and face many bone related problems.

  • Improves Heart Health:

  • Weight lifting provides significant cardiovascular benefits that can influence your long-term health. According to research, people who do strength train daily have 40 to 70% less risk of heart attacks, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and deaths related to heart attacks. It is beneficial for the heart because it strengthens the heart muscles. 

  • Boosts Mental Health:

  • Weight lifting is very good for your mental health and can decrease depression and anxiety. Working out causes your body to release endorphins and stimulates the pleasure part of the brain that improves your mood. Further, it can release pent-up stress caused by long-term problems. It also enhances your cognitive abilities that can help prevent dementia in later life. Additionally, performing exercise daily increases the focus and concentration power of your brain. It also has a surprising effect on your sleep quality and memory as well.

  • Increase Body Flexibility:

  • Some people consider weight lifting as a flexibility killer and think that it makes muscles tighter. That is wrong. It dramatically influences your muscle flexibility and provides long-lasting elasticity as compared to static stretches. Stronger muscles along with flexibility are great for injury prevention.

  • Chronic Disease Management:

  • Apart from muscle building and fat loss, strength training can also help you manage various chronic diseases like arthritis, diabetes, asthma, back pain, cancer, and dementia. Regular exercise lowers the sugar level in the blood and can prevent diabetes. Likewise, it can also control the frequency of asthma attacks. Furthermore, it improves the quality of life and has positive effects on cancer and dementia as well.

  • Builds Self-confidence:

  • Weight lifting helps you build self-confidence as you become stronger physically and mentally. Your body also looks great which helps you walk with confidence. Furthermore, it also decreases depression and anxiety. The lower the depression, the greater the self-confidence. Additionally, you see yourself making progress every day, lifting more weight, doing more repetitions, and achieving goals that significantly increase your confidence.

  • Improves Body Balance:

  • Strength training significantly improves your balance and provides you stability. The muscles considerably deteriorate in old age. However, if you lift regularly, it will build muscle strength and increase balance & coordination.

     

    Bottom Line

    Weight lifting is not only beneficial for building muscles and removing fat. It also influences overall body health and offers many benefits to your brain, bones, joints, and heart that have a noticeable effect on your life.