Fitness To You Personal Training

Why Everyone Needs To Weight Train:

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So many people shy away from weights, thinking they will not help in their efforts to lose weight, improve cardiovascular health, tone up or increase flexibility. Many people also think that weight training will do nothing but make their muscles too big.

People spend hours and hours running, riding a bike, or walking on a treadmill, often seeing no improvement (or very little) in their bodies. They ask themselves why they aren’t improving, and often the answer they come up with is to do more cardio. Obviously cardiovascular exercise is very important for conditioning of the heart and burning extra calories, but it is only one part of a complete fitness program. In fact, if you could only pick one form of exercise to do, your best bet — by far — would be weight training. Yet so many people say the same thing: "Weights just aren't for me." Unfortunately, this mentality towards weight training is completely wrong. Weight training is a must for everyone! Here's why:

Weight training is the only form of exercise that will permanently increase one’s metabolism. Why? Because weight training (done properly) builds muscle, and having extra muscle means that your body will have to burn extra calories — even at rest! For example, gain 5 pounds of muscle and your body will automatically need to burn an extra 175-250 calories a day just to maintain that muscle. Over the course of a year, that’s 18-26 pounds of energy (food) that your body burned off because it had too! Starting to see why weight training is important?

Say you do gain that 5 pounds of muscle. Think your muscles will look huge? Absolutely not. Muscle is much denser than fat, taking up far less space. Five pounds of muscle, evenly distributed on your body, will hardly be noticeable in terms of size. (Your body will look a lot better due to the increased tone and improvements in posture, however!) That extra muscle will enable you to burn so many more calories. As long as you keep that muscle on your body (by continually weight training), you will free yourself to burn more calories constantly!

Metabolism and More Benefits of Weight Training:

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Losing muscle mass is one of the main reasons that our metabolisms drop as we age or remain physically inactive. The older we get, the more muscle we lose — somewhere around 10-15% every decade we age. If a muscle is not stimulated properly (microscopically torn) through exercise it will have no reason to grow (repair itself) or strengthen, and it will begin to break down. This is because it requires energy to maintain muscle mass, and the body wants to conserve energy. So, a person can weigh the same throughout his/her entire adult life, but actually continue to lose muscle mass and gain fat. This is what happens with so many people. They grow unhealthier as they age, their metabolisms slow down, yet they may not even know it because they have always weighed the same. Developing muscle will increase your metabolism, but that muscle has to be maintained if you want to keep a higher metabolism. This is why weight training has to be a part of your life if you want to remain healthy, and build and maintain a higher metabolism.

Many different workouts can be done with weights, depending on specific goals. Weight training, despite some misconceptions, is actually a great form of cardiovascular exercise, especially if done in certain ways. Weight training is one of the best forms of exercise that one can do to help prevent osteoporosis, because weight training strengthens bones and increases bone density, as well as doing the same for muscles. Weight training also strengthens tendons and ligaments, helps improve flexibility, and helps improve and maintain posture. Properly weight training helps keep your body's musculature in balance, which helps not only with posture but in preventing injuries. Weight training is the only form of exercise that will give you lasting changes in your body, along with all these additional benefits. Because of all that it will do for you, weight training is the best form of exercise there is!

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