6 Reasons Why Women Should Strength Train Regularly
Being strong makes you feel good about yourself
Let’s call it like it is, it feels good to feel good. And taking care of yourself feels good! Strength training is a great piece of the puzzle when it comes to overall health. You are not only getting stronger but you are promoting blood flow all throughout your body. You are keeping your muscles alive and well, and when you treat them right they will treat you right. Gaining strength shows discipline because it doesn’t happen overnight. Being strong gives you confidence and independence in and out of the gym. When you push yourself through a difficult workout in the gym, the physical and mental strength from that carries over to difficult situations outside of the gym. It could be at your job or at home. It could come into play when taking care of your kids or your grandkids. How many of you have grandparents or are grandparents who wish they could play with their grandchildren more? Being strong can translate into your everyday life by making a lot of things easier.
Play with kids
Swimming
Yardwork
Traveling/Walking
Carrying groceries
Hiking
Moving furniture
Burns calories and body fat
You are never going to hear me pushing weight loss for aesthetic reasons, I am always coming from a health perspective. Being overweight is bad for your bones, joints, and muscles, plus it can do serious damage to your heart. The health risks of being overweight include high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and much more. According to data released by the CDC, the obesity rate in adults reached 42.4 percent in 2017-2018 in America.
Strength training regularly will burn calories and reduce fat, which ultimately builds lean muscle. This will help increase your metabolism to keep you burning calories regularly, even when you aren’t working out. When you lose excess weight you will take unnecessary stress off of your joints, bones, and tendons, and cardiovascular system.
Reduces Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease
A 2016 study by Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise shows that strength training significantly lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes for women. The Women's Health Study followed 35,745 healthy women and the results were pretty surprising, even for someone like myself who is an advocate for strength training. These concepts alone are excellent reasons to begin a strength training regime. Are you ready for this? Women engaging in strength training experienced a reduced rate of type 2 diabetes of 30%, compared to women with no strength training. Also, a risk reduction of 17% was observed for cardiovascular disease among the women engaging in strength training.
Helps Boost Your Immune System
Strength training is a form of working out that can help activate your immune system. It’s worth noting that individuals who are active regularly get sick less often than sedentary people. Getting regular exercise can even boost your immune response to a vaccine. Having a healthy immune system is especially important during the difficult times of COVID-19. When a lot of people are searching for the next vitamin or juice cleanse to boost their immune system, recent research is showing that nothing may do the job quite like a few sets of push-ups.
Most of our immune cells are typically located in our organs until we start to move our bodies. The response to movement is to churn out proteins that start to direct the immune cells from being dormant in our organs, to being active in our bloodstream. In other words, exercise mobilizes billions of immune cells. Researchers show that even going for a 30-minute walk can activate your immune system.
Injury Prevention
You don’t need to be an athlete playing a sport for injury prevention to be a priority. Whether we like it or not, as we get older we may become more prone to accidental injuries such as rolling an ankle, lifting something wrong, or falling. Something that we may have bounced up from when we were younger, suddenly has the potential to do some real damage. Strength training improves strength in the muscles, joints, and bones. Moreover, it helps to reduce the effects of osteoporosis as women age. The sooner you make it a priority to keep your body strong, the less you will have to worry about as you get older.
Joints- Joints allow for motion and movement of the muscles. They also provide mobility and stability, allowing for movement to take place without any unwanted movement. Strength training can maintain and build strength in the joints which helps live a pain-free life. Strong and mobile joints will also help you move better for longer. As you look at joints that go from your lower body to your upper body, some may require more mobility or stability than others. For example, generally, the ankle requires more mobility than stability. Moving up the leg you will notice that the knee requires more stability, the hip needs more mobility, the low back needs more stability, and the shoulders need more mobility. Knowing how to strengthen your joints in a controlled manner is important for longer-term health and mobility in the joints.
Bones- Bone is similar to a muscle in the sense that it is a living tissue that responds to exercise by becoming stronger. People who exercise regularly tend to have a higher bone density and strength than those who don’t exercise at all. When you strength train using weights it forces the bones to work against gravity so it reacts by becoming stronger. Having strong bones can reduce the risk of injury in the event of a fall, or accident.
Muscles- Muscles are probably the first thing most people think about when they hear strength training. Strength training is important for the muscles because that is where our force output comes from. Having strong and mobile muscles reduces the likelihood of strains or pulls and reduces the risk of falling.
Enhances Mood & Reduces Stress
One of the most rewarding benefits of working out that we get to enjoy in the moment is what are called endorphins. If you have ever heard someone use the phrase runners high, this is what they are referring to. Endorphins are tiny neurochemicals that are naturally released by our body. These endorphins consist of a large group of peptides that are produced by the central nervous system and the pituitary gland, and they play an important role in reducing pain and enhancing pleasure. They act on specific receptors of the brain and become released in response to pain, stress, exercise, and other activities. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can benefit us by boosting our self-esteem, reducing stress and anxiety, and alleviating depression. I have been training people for almost a decade and I can confidently say, everyone leaves their workouts in a better mood than when they started. And that’s not to say they were in a bad mood to begin with. Working out releases endorphins, and endorphins make us feel good. This is one reason I am big on working out in the morning. As far as mood goes, you are definitely going to start yourself on the positive side of things after a 7:00 am workout. Think about it, you warm-up for 10 minutes before getting into a 40-minute strength routine. You break a sweat, have some fun, and feel good. When you walk outside to a beautiful day to go to school, work, or whatever you do to own your day, confidence will be high and your mood will be good.
Our True Strength
It’s clear to me from the information above, that women of all ages can benefit from strength training. From physical, mental, and physiological, the benefits are guaranteed to improve your quality of life in some way shape, or form. We all have true strength within us, we just need to tap into that strength and bring out the best version of ourselves. With strength comes power, the power that I think we all deserve to feel in our lives. The challenge is finding balance. The balance between what our bodies need and what we want to do, the balance between strength training, aerobic training, and even flexibility training. To get the benefits listed throughout this post, I suggest finding a strength training routine between 3 to 5 days a week. Remember that strength training doesn’t only mean weights, you can always strength train using your own bodyweight. I have previously written a very informational blog on everything you need to know to build strength, I will include the link below. But a short tip on building strength, focus on 5 sets of 5 reps, with a 2-minute rest in between each exercise. Be sure to check out the link below to make more sense of that.
https://www.syracusefitnesscenter.com/blog/strengthtraining
If you need help unlocking your true strength, I am here to help. I offer both online and in-person personal training for a one on one approach to your fitness journey. I will structure a personalized strength program to your needs for what comes to only $50 a week. Find out more information at the link below.
Much Love,
PLD
Sources:
Strength training and diabetes: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2017/01000/Strength_Training_and_the_Risk_of_Type_2_Diabetes.5.aspx
Obesity Rates in Adults: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Podcast: Science Vs- Immune Boosting: Is it a Bust? https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UhKdqAcdqxKT20141HmTy?si=JATf46h_RzWVC2ClC7H_EQ
