Why We Should All Strength Train
What Makes It The Best Choice
I’d like to preface this with - You should do whatever training you love the most because that’s what you will stay the most consistent with and consistency is the key.
Side note: Strength and Hypertrophy training overlap quite a bit. Don’t get lost in the technicalities.
Onward.
Strength training allows us to build muscle with proper progressive overload and protein intake
.6g to .8g of protein per pound of body weight for leaner individuals - You could go by your ideal body weight if you are overweight.
With strength training, life gets easier in many ways:
Moving ourselves and the things around us takes much less effort and thus becomes less dangerous.
As you begin exercising regularly, you gain Strength, Mobility, and Endurance. Strength will be the last to leave and the quickest to return.
Muscle memory allows us to regain strength and even size with little effort. It’s the only form of training that can be retained with as little as 1/9 the effort it took to get.
Muscle does take consistent effort to obtain, like every other skill, but only 2-3x weekly would be more than enough to build muscle over time.
Muscle builds strength in the immune system, bones, tendons, ligaments, organs, and in your cognitive abilities.
As we age we become insulin insensitive and this leads to cognitive decline and glucose intolerance. The most effective way to positively affect your insulin levels is to add muscle since this is one of the storage areas of the body where you store carbs and sugars. This means muscles are very insulin sensitive and more muscle will allow us to become more insulin sensitive and effectively fight back age-related decline.
Strength Training keeps us leaner
With Strength Training, we signal to our body that we need to put our calories toward building muscle. This takes time, but building muscle guarantees us a higher metabolism. With a proper diet and protein intake, listed at the top of this blog, we tell our body to keep the muscle we have, possibly build onto it, and subtract the fat.
Our body adapts to whatever demand we impose on it. With running, we become more efficient with running. Running doesn’t require much in terms of muscular demand and since muscle is calorically expensive - Your body does the smartest thing to become better at running and drops the extra weight or in this case the muscle.
With this loss in muscle, our metabolism slows down which means we don’t burn as much as we used to and we either eat less or run more to continue losing weight.
Now you can run for an hour every day and burn maybe 500 calories, which would be more than what you would ever burn strength training in an hour. But the difference comes after you invest in building that muscle. Once you have the muscle, your body automatically burns those calories and everything you do adds to that caloric burn. And you get to keep the muscle you have because of the constant demand you put on it. It’s a smarter way to train since our lives have become mostly sedentary.
Strength training is just as effective for heart health as other forms of training
Keeping us leaner and the insulin-sensitizing effects are key here.
Hormones are regulated appropriately when we strength train
When we prioritize an activity that reduces our muscle mass like running, biking, or most long endurance forms of cardio, our cortisol rises, estrogen and progesterone go out of balance, growth hormone becomes depressed and testosterone decreases in men. This can all be improved with 2 days of strength training.
Again, cardio is not bad for you. I’m doing my best here to help you understand what signal you’re attempting to send to your body. If you love running, keep running. Adding in even 1 day of strength training will make huge differences with the signals you’re sending your body.
With all these benefits listed, I’m sure I missed several, I believe we should take a day or two out of the week to work on our strength. With cognitive decline affecting so many of us these days, I couldn’t imagine one person wanting to go bonkers at the expense of 1 hour a week of strength training. The wonderful news about all this is it only takes 2-3 days a week to receive all these benefits and then some.
I’d suggest following your typical Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge, Lunge, and Rotate with all the ranges of motion. Compound movements and progressive overload are great ways to build strength and muscle and this can be done within the range of 1-25 reps. Of course, intensity matters and so does phasing but that’s another subject for another time. Slowly progressing safely will ensure no long-term setbacks. And remember the goal with strength training is to become stronger than you were. Don’t let your training sessions leave you feeling weak day in and day out. As a beginner, you’re gonna get sore. Staying consistent will allow your body to adapt and pretty soon, you’ll forget what being sore feels like.
