I am not sure that I have really stressed the importance of strength training workouts in the past quite enough so today I will go into a bit more detail on how doing strength training workouts can help you reach your fitness goals.
Strength Training Workouts are one of the two major kinds of workouts with Cardio workouts being the other.
The main reasons to do strength training workouts
- To gain muscle
- To lose fat
- To increase metabolism
- To improve stamina
The list above if nothing else will tell you that if you are not doing them now, that you should at least start thinking about ways to do strength training workouts.
Strength Training Workouts to Gain Muscle
How to Lift Weights Properly for Strength Training
Of course we all know that lifting weights will over time help you gain muscle. If you do not believe this look at any Olympic or pro athlete and it should be obvious. The key is the strength training workouts.
To gain muscle it is important to do lifting sets to failure. Your muscles really will only get bigger and stronger by being pushed to the maximum and then your body knows to increase the size and relative strength so that you will not have this problem in the future.
If you have read my articles before you probably already know that I look at the human body as a machine that will change based on stimuli. If your body does not need more strength it will remain the same, if your body needs more strength it will adapt.
Strength Training Workouts to Lose Fat
There are two ways that your body will use workouts to lose fat. You probably already know that any exercise will force your body to burn calories and this calorie burn will force your body to burn fat and therefore make you lower your fat level IF you keep the amount of food that you eat at the same or lower.
The other way that you will lose fat by doing workouts is by elevating the amount of muscle that you have. As you gain muscle you will need to burn more calories in order to keep the amount of muscle that you have and to help maintain your body as a whole.
Strength Training to Increase Metabolism
This kind of goes together with the previous point and that is that your body will work to keep your body healthy. You have a base metabolic rate, the rate at which your body just burns calories at rest and for many hours after a tough workout you will be able to burn the calories at a faster rate at rest.
One important method that your strength training will help you to increase your metabolism is to do sets right after each other. This is known as interval training or supersetting. Do one set of bench, to failure, and then do lat pulldowns without any rest between sets. This is the basics behind interval training. The bench press works all of the chest, front shoulders, and triceps, the lat pulldowns are only able to be done because the pack, backs of shoulders and biceps are fresh and able to do a set to failure.
This interval training is a very popular way to lose these days and by doing this you get rid of the boredom that many people feel by doing hour upon hour of cardio workouts.
Strength Training to Improve Stamina
Doing strength training will build stamina. Often when we are doing things over the weekend, yardwork, playing with the kids, going for walks and other low energy type exercise we find that by the end of the day we are really tired. One thing that I have always found , although I can not seem to find any studies on this, is that by doing strength training you can move from activity to activity during the day and do not get tired very easily.
Start your Strength Training Workouts Today
I have been doing strength training for years and I know that many years ago it was just so that I could get big and strong, truly ego enriching activities but now I do strength training workouts to get strong, lean and coordinated. I love doing cardio and like the pump that I get from letting the endorphins really rage within my system and make me feel great but those workouts give me a sense of control and well being that I do not get from Cardio.
Look through the articles that I have written throughout this blog and see how your can easily do lifting at home and get these and other benefits or join a gym and learn more about building muscle. But for now remember that one of the critical parts of your fitness needs to be strength training workouts
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on Fitness