Sports are great if we want to get healthier and if we want to get more agile. Whether you choose running, swimming, football, tennis or any other sport, you will likely get healthier provided that you eat healthy, as well.
Yet, there are ways to be healthier with simply lifting weights. This implies going to the gym or having your own weights. Either way, lifting weights has plenty of health benefits and if you want to know which, read on.
A Controlled Approach – Work as Much as Necessary
With weights, you can choose how much you want to lift. This is great because bodyweight exercises give you an approximation, which can either be too little or way too much. A pull up is extremely difficult for beginners and can be disencouraging while lifting weights to target your back muscles can be done with just enough volume to overload the muscles and still leave the person feeling better.
With weights, a steady progression can be made, which not only helps out mentally, but also physically. Starting off slowly and with little to no weights is essential for some exercises, like the deadlift.
A Great Way to Exercise All Muscles
Lifting weights can target every muscle in the body. Not only could you target them all, but also limit the exercise to something safer. Whether shoulders or calves or the glutes, weights can help us hit every muscle in our bodies. Some sports target muscles simply due to exposure, as a consequence of some movements. With weight lifting, you can and should purposely target all the muscles in your body.
Lifting Also Does Wonders for the Heart
When doing high-intensity weight lifting exercises, we start engaging the aerobic part of our body, meaning the lungs.
The heart gets even more active and it also gets a very good exercise.
A healthy heart means a healthy human, so weight lifting helps in exercising another muscle, one that does a lot of work, but when it works overtime, it also gets better.
Weight Lifting Reduces Stress
All exercises reduce stress to an extent, but weight lifting has another benefit to it. By choosing how much to lift, you essentially also choose how long you will spend working out. This is important for people who do not have a lot of time. They can simply do strength training and overload their muscles in 3 repetitions. This way, they can spend less than an hour in the gym and still get an amazing workout and also have time for everything else.
The Bones and Muscles Will Be Thankful
Resistance and high-intensity training is very good for the bones and the muscles, namely muscle mass. As we age, we naturally lose muscle mass and bone density, which is why plenty of elderly people move very awkwardly and slowly. “You don’t get old and stop working out, you stop working out and then get old” Gary Daniels once said, in an interview with Scott Adkins. Daniels stretches 2 hours every day, and all one would need to stay healthy is at least 30 minutes of high-intensity exercising on a weekly basis.
Weight lifting has plenty of benefits, these being but some of them. If you start lifting weights, you will quickly discover some of the benefits on your own.