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What are the benefits of resistance training?
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May 21, 2024 · Resistance training provides a wealth of benefits. Aside from building muscle tone and strength, it also improves mental health, relieves stress, and increases balance. It also can help with everyday activities like carrying groceries, climbing stairs, or working in your garden.
- Overview
- What is strength training?
- 14 benefits of strength training backed by science
- Tips to get the most out of your strength routine
- The bottom line
Regular strength training can improve your strength and flexibility, and decrease your risk of injury and falls, among other advantages.
If you could do one thing to improve your health, strength training should be at the top of your list. It involves using one or more muscle groups to perform a specific task, such as lifting a weight or squatting.
Due to the growing body of evidence supporting its many benefits, strength training has become a fundamental part of most exercise programs. If you’ve ever considered strength training, you may wonder how it will benefit your life.
This article shares 14 benefits of strength training.
Strength training is also known as weight training, resistance training, and muscular training.
The general definition of strength training is any physical movement in which you use your body weight or equipment (e.g., dumbbells and resistance bands) to build muscle mass, strength, and endurance (1).
The main types of strength training include (1):
•Muscular hypertrophy. Also known as muscle building, this type of strength training uses moderate-to-heavy weights to stimulate muscle growth.
•Muscular endurance. This refers to your muscles’ ability to sustain exercise for a period of time. Training to increase muscular endurance usually involves high reps using light weights or body weight.
•Circuit training. During this form of full-body conditioning, you cycle through various exercises with little to no rest between them.
1. Makes you stronger
Strength training helps you become stronger. Gaining strength allows you to perform daily tasks much easier, such as carrying heavy groceries or running around with your kids (3, 4). Furthermore, it helps improve athletic performance in sports that require speed, power, and strength, and it may even support endurance athletes by preserving lean muscle mass (3, 4).
2. Burns calories efficiently
Strength training helps boost your metabolism in two ways. First, building muscle increases your metabolic rate. Muscles are more metabolically efficient than fat mass, allowing you to burn more calories at rest (5, 6). Second, research shows that your metabolic rate is increased up to 72 hours after strength-training exercise. This means that you’re still burning additional calories hours and even days after your workout (7, 8).
3. Decreases abdominal fat
Fat stored around the abdomen, especially visceral fat, is associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases, including heart disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer (9, 10, 11, 12). Multiple studies have shown the benefit of strength-training exercises for reducing abdominal and total body fat (13, 14, 15).
Start with the basics
If you’re new to strength training, you’ll want to master basic movement patterns first. This will ensure you’re performing exercises safely and effectively (1, 4). You may wish to start with bodyweight exercises that emphasize balance, core stability, and basic movement patterns (e.g., bend-and-lift, single-leg, pushing, pulling, and rotation actions) (1, 4). This could include bodyweight squats, single-leg stands, pushups, forearm planks, the bird dog exercise, and plank toe taps. After you feel comfortable with basic movement patterns, try adding external forces (e.g., weights, resistance bands, and machines). If you’re unsure how to use a piece of equipment properly, speak with a physical therapist or personal trainer.
Choose an appropriate volume and load
The types of exercises you choose will depend on your fitness goals, such as trying to build muscle (hypertrophy) or increasing muscular endurance. For general muscular fitness, you’ll want to select a weight that allows you to perform 8–15 reps for 1–3 sets while maintaining proper form. If you’re struggling to perform at least eight reps or cannot maintain good form, the weight is likely too heavy for you (except in advanced lifters with strength goals). On the flip side, if you can easily perform 15 or more reps, you should probably increase the weight. To gain strength and build muscle, you need to challenge your muscles. Known as progressive overload, you should aim to increase the weight, reps, or number of sets as you become stronger (68, 69).
Avoid overdoing it
While some soreness is normal the day or two after a strength-training workout — this is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) — you should not be in pain or unable to perform your daily activities. It’s a common myth that you need to be sore after a workout in order to achieve results. However, gaining strength and muscle mass are not linked to muscle soreness (70). Instead, aim to end your sets just before failure, meaning you cannot physically complete any additional reps. This will decrease the likelihood of DOMS while still sufficiently challenging the muscle (70). Finally, give yourself enough time to rest and allow your muscles to heal and grow. Most people benefit from 2–3 strength-training sessions per week (71, 72). Summary To yield the best results, start slow and focus on your form first. As you progress, slowly add more weight or resistance or increase your reps and sets.
If you haven’t tried strength training, now is the time to start.
Strength training provides numerous health benefits, such as a lower risk of heart disease and diabetes, stronger bones, better brain health and mood, and improved self-esteem.
Fortunately, strength training isn’t just lifting weights at the gym. You can get in a great strength-training workout using your body weight, resistance bands, free weights, or even items around your house.
Whether you’re new or experienced, strength training is for everyone.
Sep 27, 2024 · Benefits of resistance training. Resistance training helps slow aging in several ways. Bigger, stronger muscles. As many people age, their muscles become smaller and weaker. When extensive, this age-related muscle loss can eventually result in sarcopenia — a condition that’s associated with frailty, falls and fractures.
Jan 14, 2021 · Resistance training offers all sorts of benefits, from weight loss to stronger bones. You can do it with a variety of equipment (or none) in the gym or at home.
- 8 min
Aug 8, 2022 · Resistance Training Benefits. There are many resistance training benefits. Building muscular strength is one of the main benefits of physical activity. Muscular strength is great for...
Mar 18, 2024 · 1. Increases Muscle Tone. By design, resistance training —or using your muscles to work against weight or force—improves your muscle tone. It may even increase your muscle mass, too, if you...
Apr 29, 2023 · By Mayo Clinic Staff. Want to reduce body fat, increase lean muscle mass and burn calories more efficiently? Strength training to the rescue! Strength training is a key component of overall health and fitness for everyone. Use it or lose it. Lean muscle mass naturally diminishes with age.
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related to: What are the benefits of resistance training?Learn From The Experienced Strength & Conditioning NCAA Coach, Jeff Friday. Register Now! Looking For Strength Training In Your Area? Check Out Our Basketball Training Program!
