Why Strength Training is Necessary for Health and Longevity
Strength training isn’t just for men and bodybuilders. When implemented properly, lifting weights can help all of us to live longer and feel better while we’re living. Let’s dive into why strength training is such a powerful tool for your health and longevity!
OUR NEEDS FOR STRENGTH TRAINING
There are undeniable mental and physical benefits that come with maintaining a consistent strength training routine. That said, there are certain standards that we need to sustain in order to see these long-term benefits that we’re looking for.
The main criteria to follow for strength training benefits:
Resistance train at least twice per week
Prioritize compound movements and target all of the main muscle groups
Additional customization within the structure will come from considering your individual needs and personal goals (IE: exercise variation, volume, intensity, frequency, rest)
These are the health recommendations from the World Health Organization.
BENEFITS FOR DISEASE PREVENTION
Consistent strength training helps to reduce the risk of several diseases. These are just a few of the most notable.
LIFTING LOWERS BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS
For individuals with type II diabetes (and those who want to prevent it in the future), lifting weights can be an incredible tool to lower your blood sugar levels naturally. This happens for a couple of different reasons. First, through consistent resistance training, the body becomes more sensitive to insulin. This means that it can move glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream into the cells more efficiently.
Additionally, the more muscle we build over time, the lower our blood sugar levels are likely to be, naturally. This happens because as our muscle mass increases, we also increase our body’s capacity to store and use this glucose in the muscles.
Individuals with muscle atrophy or lower muscle mass tend to have higher blood sugar levels and an increased risk of type II diabetes.
LIFTING IMPROVES HEART HEALTH
Cardio (like jogging or the stairmaster) is not the only thing that helps to improve cardiovascular health. Lifting is also a powerful tool for improving heart health, while also decreasing risks of cardiovascular disease in the future.
A Harvard study monitored nearly 45,000 men over a 12 year period. The goal of the study was to see which types of exercise help to improve heart health and reduce heart disease. This study found that engaging in weight training for just a minimum of 30 minutes per week was associated with a 23% reduction in CHD risk compared to those who did lift during the trial.
These benefits happen because lifting lowers your blood pressure, lowers your LDL levels (or “bad” cholesterol), and decreases inflammation in your body. All of these benefits are critical for improving your heart function and decreasing your risk of heart disease. Lifting can be an extra powerful tool for obese and overweight individuals, where it tends to be safer on the joints to work in lower impact environments.
LIFTING HELPS FIGHT CANCER CELL DEVELOPMENT
Prolonged inflammation in the body is one of the biggest drivers for cancer development and growth. Individuals who have higher levels of pro-inflammatory markers (including CRP, IL-6, and TNF-α) are seen to have an increased risk of cancer development. Strength training directly lowers all of these pro-inflammatory drivers, helping to keep the body in healthy balance.
In addition to that, strength training also increases anti-inflammatory markers (including IL-10 and TGF-β) ****which help to more quickly reduce inflammation when it does naturally occur.
BENEFITS FOR YOUR BODY
Consistent strength training helps to improve our posture, joint health, and keep us safe from falling as we get older. This becomes especially important as we get older, and even more so if we allow ourselves to become sedentary with time.
LIFTING IMPROVES POSTURE & JOINT HEALTH
Overall, this is personally one of the biggest reasons (in my opinion) that I believe we should all continue with some form of resistance training for life. Especially in this day and age, where a majority of us are sedentary, or sitting down most of the day.
Resistance training is crucial for maintaining our posture and joint health over time. A healthy and natural posture is one that doesn’t exhibit any imbalances through the joints or muscles. When you experience imbalances, you also experience compensations (poor movement mechanics) and usually a lot of recurring pain and injuries. All of this continues to put negative stress on the body until it gets resolved. Lifting helps us to rebuild and then maintain healthy balance within our muscles and joints.
Regularly training our major muscle groups through full range of motion allows our joints to stay strong and mobile for life. Otherwise muscles, tendons, and ligaments become less durable and weakened over time. This then leads to issues with osteoporosis down the line.
Not only that, but before then — and what is happening now in younger generations far more quickly — is pain and injury from poor posture. One example of how this may happen is if you sit at a computer all day — your shoulders may round forward and your head might begin to jut forward. Over time, this creates excess strain on your neck, upper back, and shoulders. All of which lead to neck injuries, pain, headaches, and nerve compression.
Proper programming around strength training and corrective exercise will help you to correct these issues over time, and then to avoid them in the future!
LIFTING PREVENTS FALL INJURIES
As we get older, and especially at age 65 and up, our risk of falling and getting injured from falling increases. By age 65, one in four adults will report a fall each year. Training functional strength and balance helps to decrease fall risks by 31%.
Building and maintaining functional strength around the 7 fundamental movement patterns specifically (squat, lunge, hinge, push, pull, gait, and rotation) helps individuals maintain balance, coordination, and healthy movement patterns. Lifting is not just about isolating your individual muscle groups — it’s about training all of the muscles to work together, in coordination. This directly decreases fall risk.
In addition to that, a consistent resistance training routine that prioritizes progressive overload also helps keep our bones strong and healthy, furthering injury prevention (like fractures and breaks) even if the individual does fall.
BENEFITS FOR YOUR BRAIN
Following a regular resistance training routine will often help with improving your mental health, better decision-making, better focus, and help improve memory too!
LIFTING IMPROVES YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
Strength training is seen to be just as beneficial as a form of treatment for mild and moderate depression — compared alongside psychotherapy and anti-depressant medications. That said, intensity of the exercise matters, so for these benefits you may want to work with challenging weights and intensities of exercise.
These benefits come from the increase in dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. In addition to that, there is also a reduction in cortisol levels, which help to eliminate common feelings of burn-out, stress, and overwhelm.
Over time, lack of movement can increase our experiences of depression and anxiety — but getting back to moving, even if slowly at first, can help to improve all of these symptoms and help you to feel the endorphins (and motivation) again!
LIFTING IMPROVES YOUR WORK-FLOW AND FOCUS
Strength training is a common tool used among business-owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders. It’s not just for physical health; it also improves our brain function. Regular resistance training improves executive functions like better focus, decision-making, and problem-solving skills — all which transfer over to improved performance in your work and projects. This includes creative lines of work too.
These benefits occur due to the increase in dopamine, serotonin, and oxygen to the brain, and it is likely that higher intensity and more challenging forms of resistance training will provide better benefits, if this is the goal.
LIFTING IMPROVES MEMORY & LEARNING
Resistance training improves memory and our ability to learn because of the increase in neuron cell growth in our hippocampus. This area of our brain controls our memory, and a healthy lifting routine can help to sustain and improve in these areas too!
As we get older, it will become even more crucial to stimulate this area of our brain, because otherwise our hippocampus will experience shrinkage over time.
FINAL NOTES
Our bodies are our capsule to move through life and you deserve to feel good while you live. Resistance training just a minimum of twice per week (while focusing on those fundamental movements) can help you to work towards these longer impact health goals (like disease prevention, a strong body, and a strong mind).
If you’re interested in 1on1 coaching around healthy movement or nutrition, apply here!
