If, like many people interested in developing their health and fitness today, you spend a lot of time reading online articles and browsing through lifestyle magazines, chances are you’ve seen your fair share of chiseled men and women plastered across the pages.
Although plenty of the models used to advertise health and fitness today have been significantly air-brushed and photoshopped, it’s obvious they’ve put some time in at the gym. On top of this, research suggests that gym time could be the true reason behind their healthy glow and happy smiles.
Lifting weights can help you to cut down your risk of diabetes, eliminate back pain, burn away excess fat, and even fight against depression. Weightlifting isn’t just a fantastic way to tone your appearance and enhance your body composition – it also assists in improving your overall health, leading to a happier and fitter lifestyle.
Muscle Combats Fat
If you start dedicating yourself to regularly lifting weights, you may be able to indulge in that extra pint of beer, or slice of pizza the next time you’re feeling lavish. A study published in 2008 suggested that the muscle fibers we build when lifting weights help to improve the metabolism of the entire body as a whole. In other words, increasing the muscle fibers that are gained through weight lifting can mean that you reduce your body fat without having to change your diet at all.
Stock Up With the Right Supplements
Although you might not have to give up pizza, you may benefit from adding a few extra things to your diet. For example, proper strength training means stocking up on high-quality sources of protein at the best possible times – as protein plays a massive role in muscle health and metabolism. Some people also enjoy the benefits of HGH pills, a substance that helps to regulate body fluids, composition, bone and muscle growth, fat and sugar metabolism, and even heart function.
Working Out Your Upper Body
When using weight training to improve your overall body tone and shape, it’s worth recognizing that different exercises will be more beneficial to different muscle groups. Strength training routines are often incredibly useful for targeting a wide range of muscles within the upper-body. This includes the biceps, triceps, chest, and shoulders.
Just some of the exercises that you can try to target your biceps include: standing barbell curls, bicep cable curls, and dumbbell curls. For triceps, try bench presses, cable pull downs, and triceps pushups and for the shoulders, use military presses, lateral raises, and dumbbell shoulder presses. Pushing motions are most beneficial for pectoral or chest muscles. The incline fly, C-sweep, dumbbell fly, and push-ups all fall under this category.
Working out the Lower Body
In general, lower body exercises are more tailored towards strengthening the muscles in the calves, thighs, and buttocks. The gluteus are the muscles within the body that help to keep your body straight at the hips, and rotate your legs outwards. Working these muscles can be done through lunges and squats.
By adding weight training to your lower-body exercises, you can improve your overall fitness much faster, and place extra strain on your lower body which works to keep you balanced.
Don’t be Afraid to Develop Your Own Workout
When you’re browsing for weight lifting and strength training exercises online today, the chances are you’ll come across a wide range of different options and routines to try out. Although many of these regimens can be very useful to a variety of different people, it’s important to remember that you always have the option to try developing your own workout. Individually developed workouts can be tailored to your own specific needs.
For example, combining lower body exercises with upper body weight training can help to turboboost your exercise regimen, and ensure that you meet your fitness goals much faster than you may have expected.
Try combining exercises in different ways and find the solution that works best for your needs, and your muscles. Remember that when you’re getting started with weights, you should start small and increase the weight over time – straining your muscles won’t deliver a better workout. In fact, that can be counter-productive