In our opinion, every workout plan should include strength training. Getting a tighter and more toned physique is just one of the health benefits you’ll reap.

If we told you that a certain type of exercise could benefit your heart, improve balance, strengthen your bones, and help you burn body fat while making you look and feel better, why wouldn't you want to get started? Studies show that strength training can provide all of these benefits and more.

“The basic principle is to apply a load and overload the muscle so it needs to adapt and get stronger”

Our 5 Reasons To Include Strength Training

1. Makes you stronger and fitter.

The first way strength training boosts your health and fitness is an obvious one, it makes you stronger and fitter.

By increasing your overall body strength it will make it easier to do things you need to do on a day to day basis especially as we get older and naturally start to lose muscle.

2. Protects bone health and muscle mass.

The second way we can boost health and fitness through strength training is by protecting our bone health and muscle mass.

At around the age of 30 we start losing as much as 3-5 percent of lean muscle mass per year.

But don’t worry because with two 45 minute resistance training sessions per week we can improve functional performance, as well as bone density, structure and strength.

The good news is everyone can use strength training to help preserve or increase muscle mass, strength, and power, which are essential for bone, joint, and muscle health as we age.

3. Helps to keep body fat low

The third way strength training helps with our health and fitness is it burns a lot of calories helping to reduce our body fat percentage.

If you had an effective and efficient training session you will also continue burning calories post workout for up to 36 hours.

Over time you will also increase your resting metabolism (meaning the rate at which your body burns calories when you’re just going about your day, not exercising).

Resistance or strengthening exercises keep your metabolism active after exercising much longer than after an aerobic workout.

4. Boosts energy and improves mood

If we haven’t convinced you to begin strength training yet then we’ve got another couple of points to cover.

The next one is it can boost your energy levels and mood.

Strength training will elevate your endorphin levels which lift energy levels and improve mood. Working out in general is very well known to boost your energy and mood but strength training is our favourite!

It has also been proven to improve your sleep too!

5. Cardiovascular benefits

The final point is that strength training does have cardiovascular benefits.

Along with aerobic exercise, muscle-strengthening activity helps improve blood pressure.

It’s recommended to do strength training twice per week plus 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity to help reduce hypertension and lower the risk of heart disease.

We hope you learned a couple of things from this post and feel encouraged to begin your strength training journey or even continue on it.

If you’re in need of any help kickstarting your strength training regime please do reach out as we’d be more than happy to assist.