Strength training is more than just muscle building, although it certainly helps to create a perfect physique. This blog post will explain why women should engage in this stereotypically considered not female sport.
There is no reason to doubt that girls should also do weightlifting. It’s not just about looking good in the mirror. Weight lifting can change your inner world and change your life situation for the better.
Here are 10 AMAZING benefits of strength training for women.
1. Burn more fat
-Researchers at Tufts University found that when overweight women lifted heavy weights twice a week, they lost an average of 14.6 pounds of fat and gained 1.4 pounds of muscle.
2. Change your body shape
-You may think your genes determine how you look. That’s not necessarily true. Weight training can slim you down, create new curves, and help avoid the “middle-age spread.”
3. Boost your metabolism
-The less muscle you have, the slower your metabolism will be. As women age, they lose muscle at increasing rates, especially after the age of 40. When you diet without doing resistance training, up to 25 percent of the weight loss may be muscle loss.
4. Get stronger & more confident
-Regular weight training can make you 50 percent stronger in six months. Being strong is also empowering.
5. Build strong bones
-It’s been well documented that women need to do weight-bearing exercise to build and maintain bone mass. Just as muscles get stronger and bigger with use, so do bones when they’re made to bear weight. Which is so important for women as they age?
6. Improve your mental state
-The endorphins that are released during aerobic activities are also present during resistance training. When researchers rounded up all the studies on resistance training and anxiety, they found that lifting weights reduced anxiety symptoms in both healthy participants as well as those with a physical or mental illness. So how does resistance training have this effect on your psychological wellbeing? Your muscles, heart, and lungs aren’t the only things stimulated by exercise. What benefits the body benefits the brain.
7. Improve sports fitness
-You don’t have to be an athlete to get the sports benefit of weight training. Improved muscle mass and strength will help you in all physical activities, whether it’s bicycling with the family, swimming, golfing, or skiing…whatever sport you enjoy.
8. Reduce injuries
-Weightlifting improves joint stability and builds stronger ligaments and tendons. Training safely and with proper form can help decrease the likelihood of injuries in your daily life. It can also improve physical function in people with arthritis.
9. Get heart healthy
-More than 480,000 women die from cardiovascular disease each year, making it the number-one killer of women over the age of 25. Most people don’t realize that pumping iron can also keep your heart pumping.
10. Maintain healthy blood sugar levels
-In addition to keeping your ticker strong, weight training can improve glucose utilization (the way your body processes sugar) by as much as 23 percent.
