A new year means a new you, right? Lots of people create resolutions surrounding health and wellness, but they quit because they don’t have a purpose for pursuing their goals.
To overcome hard challenges, you need a purpose or passion to drive you through them, and research can often help with that. If you’ve been wanting to explore strength training to aid in your weight loss journey and want to learn how it can help you in the long run, you’ve come to the right place.
Read on to learn 10 benefits of strength training for women, and then use them to identify your “why” for embarking on this journey.
1. Enhance Overall Mood
Strength and resistance training help anxiety and Depression by targeting the same systems that cause them. This goes especially for neurotransmitters and neurotrophic and growth factors (the growth of your nervous tissue).
On a chemical level, exercise can increase your body’s dopamine for 30-90 minutes after exercise, and there are reasons to believe that regular exercise can improve your body’s overall production of the “happy” chemical.
The same goes for serotonin and norepinephrine, which both work to regulate anxiety, energy, and overall attentiveness.
2. Reduced Risk of Injury
Strength training helps build muscle, but it also helps strengthen bone density, which reduces the risk of breaks and fractures.
Building a strong back and core can also help correct posture and prevent lower back pain.
3. Less Chance of Osteoporosis
As we’ve already talked about, strength training — especially resistance training — can increase your bone density. This density can also lead to lowered chances of osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis is a condition that causes the bones in your body to become weak and brittle, which makes them prone to breakage. Osteoporosis-related breaks and fractures are most likely to happen in the wrist, hip, or spine, and women are more likely to break a bone this way than men.
4. Build Without the Bulk
Whether or not you see this is as a benefit or setback is up to you, but women can strength train without building the bulk that men so often have.
This has to do with the amount of testosterone that the female body produces. Since levels of this hormone are so much lower in women than it is in men, they are less likely to build the same amount of muscle mass.
Testosterone is responsible for added muscle mass because it increases the levels of growth hormone in a person’s body, making it possible to build more muscle.
5. Reduced Risk of Heart Disease and Diabetes
Strength training is also great for your heart health. It has been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease and type-2 diabetes.
Though cardio doesn’t produce the same amount of fat-burning results as strength training, pairing the two can produce great results for your heart health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that the average American adult gets 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio every week.
That’s a brisk 30-minute walk 5 days out of the week, but that’s not the only thing you can do. You can dance, run, garden, or even run up and down the stairs a few times to meet these standards.
6. Increased Flexibility
Strength training can also increase your flexibility. Resistance training is similar to stretching your muscles and has been shown to improve flexibility in the same way.
7. Improved Athletic Ability
Whether it’s biking longer distances or increasing your golf drive, strength training leads to improved athletic ability.
It increases your stamina and endurance, meaning you can perform better in any activity you choose to partake in.
8. Burns Fat Faster Than Cardio
Many people turn to running when they want to lose weight and burn fat, but strength training is actually where it’s at.
Not only have studies and research shown that you burn more calories in the hour following weight training than you do cardio, but that your resting metabolism can stay elevated for up to 38 hours later.
Cardio has shown no similar results.
9. Great Form of Low Impact Cardio Training
Though strength training has proven to be more impactful than cardio, it’s still a great way to incorporate it into your workout routine.
You can incorporate cardio into your strength training with burpees, jumping rope, using a row machine, or even going for a walk, run, or jog once you finish strength training.
If you choose to go for a run or walk, it’s best to leave it for your cooldown so you don’t use any energy you’ve stored for your workout.
10. Self-Empowerment
Perhaps the biggest benefit of strength training (no matter your gender): the amount of self-empowerment you feel after each and every session.
Now, not every day is going to be great, and there might be days where you feel like giving up or staying in bed, but the results themselves are worth it.
Strength training provides a tangibility that many forms of exercise and self-improvement don’t. When the weight you can lift goes up, or you finally start running that 7-minute mile, you’re only going to want to keep going.
Remember These Benefits of Strength Training For Women
Remembering the benefits of strength training for women can serve as a form of motivation for the days you might not feel like working out. Strength training works to not only improve your physical strength but also your mental health!
Both work together to keep your body at its best and deserve to be taken seriously.
Are you ready to get started on the path to a healthier you? Click here to find a ChiroThin doctor in your area.