RESISTANCE TRAINING.
Resistance training, also known as strength training or weight training has numerous benefits including increases in strength, muscle mass, and bone density. It will not only make you strong, but can also help with managing your weight, gain body confidence, improve your quality of life and can actually slow down or even reverse the ageing process.
Benefits for women
Many women have a false impression of the outcome from resistance training. Some women often perform training programmes that excludes resistance training because of the “fear of getting big muscles”. This misunderstanding has held many women back in achieving the increase in bone density and muscle strength that is needed to maintain good health.
Benefits for the over 60’s
Exercise not only improves quality of life but also increases the length of life. It’s never too late to start! We could ask the question whether all the negative effects caused by biological aging are inevitable or if exercise can counteract some of them. The answer to that is, 50% of the negative effects caused by aging are due to sedentary living, while the other 50% is due to actual aging. Resistance training can increase muscular strength by 30% or more and this is the key element to successful aging.
Osteoporosis, a condition of accelerated bone mineral loss which leads to fractures, mostly in women (although men get it, too), can be avoided. Weight bearing exercises prevent age-related bone loss by providing stress to bones resulting in an increase in bone density.
Benefits for Children and Adolescents
Children and adolescents include individuals from 6 to 17 years of age. By age 7 or 8 years, children should be physically and mentally mature enough to initiate a resistance training program.
The three target areas that are recommended are:
Aerobic endurance
Muscular strengthening
Bone strengthening activities
Regular training results in benefits to cardiovascular, metabolic, and skeletal health.
Injury Prevention
It is also important to determine the primary sites of injury in your sport or recreational activity. The term “prehabilitation” (the opposite of rehabilitation) has become popular. This term refers to preventing initial injury by training the joints and muscles that are most susceptible to injury in an activity.
Resistance training is unquestionably the best training that you can do. It will deliver more benefits than any other style of training, in every way.