Posts Tagged ‘Resistance Training’
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has recently studied body composition and strength changes in women with milk and resistance exercise. Another words, does drinking fat free milk help build muscle mass in women? It has already been proven that consuming fat free milk after a strength training workout in men, helps to build muscle and a loss of fat.
There was a 12 week study with young healthy women that compared drinking fat free milk after strength training to drinking a carbohydrate energy drink. The study proved that drinking 500 ml of fat free milk immediately after a workout, increased muscle mass, increased a greater loss of body fat & increased strength gains in younger women than those who drank the carbohydrate energy drink.
Resistance training is really the only way for women to improve physical and muscular strength, metabolic and bone health. Most women don’t consume enough dairy products because of their fat content. However, the benefits specifically after your weight training workout helps younger women. Be sure to drink fat free milk after your workout to help you build muscle!
Advantages of Weight Training
Yes it’s true, we lose 5 pounds of muscle after our 30th birthday. In fact, research is now showing that physical inactivity is the 2nd leading preventable cause of death in the US. That is why we should have a weight training/strength training regimen. There are so many benefits regardless of what age you start. I explained how the muscle actually gets little tears before it can repair and rebuild itself. Now, I’ll share with you the advantages of weight training.
- Research shows that resistance training can slow down or reverse the process of aging.
- It builds muscle to help prevent osteoporosis.
- Weight training raises our resting metabolic rate, that is the number of calories we burn at rest.
- Some evidence is showing that it can lower moderate to high blood pressure.
- Muscle strength and tone can actually help prevent falls.
These are just a few advantages of weight training. So with this knowledge what are you waiting for? Pick up your soup cans and start with some bicep curls. Do some dips during commercials, by putting your legs on the coffee table and hands on the sofa. How about using that 5 pound bag of potatoes for leg extensions. Using your body weight, bands, machines, free weights or elastic tubing plus anything around the house that offers some resistance can be a good start.
Did you know that you lose 5 pounds of muscle every year after age 30? That is why weight training is very important at any age. There are many advantages to weight training, resistance training or strength training. By mentioning this type of resistance training, I’m referring to weight lifting in any manner, using weight apparatus, elastic tubing, or your own body weight, anything that offers resistance.
It is interesting how the muscles work at increasing muscle size or mass. Every time you lift weights in a progression way (increasing weight, lowering reps) you intentionally put microscopic tears in the muscle, this process is called catabolism. When the muscle repair itself, that is called anabolism. When the muscle repair itself, is when growth takes place. The healing and growing actually takes place when the muscle is not working and at rest.
Weight training can slow down or even reverse the signs of aging! There are many benefits to weight training and tomorrow I’ll share them with you. So stay tuned for the advantages of weight training!
There are 4 principles of resistance training in which you can build muscle mass. I’ll briefly attempt to explain them here, today. The 4 principles are; progression, regularity, overload and specificity.
Progression, as you can imagine is, continually placing more demands on the muscles and progressively increase the demands overtime, to result in long term gains. If you don’t constantly challenge the body (muscles) they will no longer have a reason to adapt or change. You’ll see faster progression in beginners, than you will with novice resistance trainers. A natural and helpful way to increase the progression, is to increase weight by 5-10% and decrease repetitions. You can also increase weights and increase repetitions, or even add another exercise for that body part.
The second principle is Regularity. Sure it makes sense if you don’t consistently train your muscles you won’t see and muscle gains. The old adage, “Use it or Lose it” is consistent with this principle. Training adaptations cannot be stored. You’ll only see long term muscle strength and performance if training is done on a regular basis.
Principle Overload is the 3rd principle in resistance training. Place greater demands on the muscle, beyond the level which it is normally stressed! Change the exercise intensity, duration and frequency for changes to take place. You can see a further explanation of this on my web page, www.fitnessfromthepro.com!
Finally, the 4th principle is SAID-Specific Adaptations to Impose Demands. That is every muscle should be trained to make specific gains in strength and endurance.
When you are starting a program to build muscle mass, please keep these 4 principles in mind so you can see the gains you seek with the proper demands placed on the muscles!