Strength Changes Your Life

Strength training for an untrained individual completely changes their life. A person becomes more capable of moving not only more weight in specific exercises, but moving their own body through space becomes easier. Every day movements, like sitting down and standing up from a chair, getting into and out of their car, raking leaves, reaching overhead and grabbing something in the kitchen, getting into a squat position to pick something off the ground, all become easier movements. When we are young, we might not think these movements are difficult or demanding, but as we age, these movements can become challenging and impossible. Strength training improves both our muscle force production and mobility. As a result, our bodies become more resilient to age related physical decline. If you currently do not do any resistance training, I strongly encourage you to begin! For beginners, I would resistance train 2 or 3 days of the week, with at least one rest day between training days. Focus on compound movements, exercises that incorporate multiple muscles across multiple joints working simultaneously in a single exercise. Some examples of compound movements include squats, lunges, deadlifts, chest press, shoulder press, rows, and pull ups. These are great exercises to select because they are time-efficient. You can easily get full-body workouts, were all muscle groups are worked, in a single workout without spending too much time in the gym each session. A quality exercise program can have you training each muscle group twice per week in just two or three workouts a week.