What is Strength Training?
Life is easier when you are strong and feel healthy. Carrying groceries? Lifting heavy boxes? Playing sports? No problem. To get the benefits, you need to do some strength training, sometimes called resistance training. It is a way to train your body to use your muscles against a resistance. The resistance can be a heavy object, bodyweight, dumbbells, or anything that has mass. For example, if you want bigger biceps, you would do pull-ups or use a dumbbell.
Why Strength Training is Important
It makes you stronger and more durable in the world by doing things like lowering the risk of injury, improving speed and agility, and much more! Overall, adding strength training exercises in your workout routine keeps you strong and healthy!
What You Should Know
Depending on if you are training to gain muscle mass or to lose weight, you need to train specifically for your fitness goals.
- For strength, try more heavy sets with fewer reps
- For endurance and weight loss, try fewer moderate sets with higher reps
- For muscle growth, aim for more total reps, with moderate to heavy weights
It is very important that you find a fitness program that is challenging, but not too hard that will make you quit. Make sure that you stick with the program and write down your progress. To jumpstart your search for the right program:
- For bodyweight exercises for those of you who do not have access to a gym, check out: maxcapacitytraining.com/
- For exercises in the gym, check out: aworkoutroutine.com
Summary and Recommendations
Anyone can do strength training. All you need is a pair of good athletic shoes and a can-do attitude!
Resources
Special Thanks:
Derek Chang graduated with a Bachelors degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah. Go Utes! He was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He aspires to become a physician-entrepreneur to find and create new ways of improving overall patient health. He enjoys skiing, hiking, camping, reading books, meeting new people, and learning anything new.
