Year round, day or night, awake or sleeping, your body’s muscles are working.  Strength training is the process of exercising this muscular system with weighted resistance.  Developing a safe, efficient and effective strength training program is one of the four essential elements of optimal health. (strength training, cardiovascular training, nutrition/weight management and flexibility training.)

 We produce strength through muscle contraction.  The contraction attempts to shorten the muscle.  This shortening / movement, or lack there of, depends on the relationship between muscular forces and resistive forces.  Many factors affect this contraction performance.  The factors include:  gender, age, limb length, muscle length, tendon insertion, muscle fiber type, and motor learning.  These factors do not cause you to become unable to have positive gains from a strength training program.  Positive affects of strength training have been shown to occur at any age, gender, limb length, etc.  Below is a list of some of the benefits you will gain from an effective strength training program.

• Increased muscle fiber strength and size.
   
• Increased tendon, bone, and ligament tensile strength.
   
• Decreased risk of injury.
   
• Increased metabolic rate.
   
• Profound influence on physical capacity and physical appearance.

 Unless we perform regular strength exercises, we lose up to ½ pound of muscle every year after age 25.  This gradual decrease in lean muscle tissue means that non-training adults will experience ½ percent reduction in metabolic rate each year.  This decrease in muscle tissue causes a corresponding decrease in metabolic rate, but the good news is that an increase in muscle tissue will also cause a corresponding increase in our metabolic rate. 

 Fight the sedentary aging process with a regular strength training program and reap the many positive benefits it has to offer.

Make it a Healthy Day