Strength Training

Yeah, we all know cardio is good for us, but we also know that we're not building muscle. If you are not using weights or doing strength training, you may be missing out on these awesome benefits:

1. Sleep
   Strength training takes a tremendous amount of exertion. When you exercise your muscles and physically tax yourself, you create more "adenosine", which is a by-product of energy consumption. Your body breaks down adenosine, which has the effects of making you sleepy. PS: Caffeine temporarily blocks adenosine.
   
   
2. Strong Bones
   When we get older, believe it or not, we lose 1 to 2 percent of our bone mass tissue per year, especially after 35. But by getting strengths training done on a regular basis, you can protect your skeleton. Resistance training is very important to counteract bone loss. The forces against your bones while doing strength training stimulate the growth of osteoblasts, or the cells that build new bone.
   
   
3. Heart Benefits
   We know that inflammation, any type of inflammation, is not good for us. Strength training twice a week can drop certain inflammatory markers. One hypothesis is that resistance training could promote the secretion of cytokines, a protein that fights inflammation.
   
   
4. Faster Metabolism
   You may notice a change in pant size. Why you ask? Muscle cells require much more energy to function then fat cells. So by building your muscles you torch more calories. Keep up your strength training, your lean mass grows and your metabolic rate can rise incrementally.
   
   
5. Diabetes
   Muscles are our body's main "tank" for storing glucose. If you gain muscle you may have more room to store the glucose you eat, which means it is not circulating in your blood. This means you need less insulin to keep your blood sugar steady.
   
   
6. Less Anxiety
   Pumping iron can really calm your nerves. Strength training can help in several ways, from altering key cognitive hormones to repairing disrupted signaling in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis - aka the body's main stress response system.

If you are ever interested in getting back into shape, making changes to your current workout routine, or need some help figuring some health-related things out, contact us today.