HEALTH BASICS 101: Lesson 4 – Resistance Training

Why should we lift weights???

Lifting weight is NOT for becoming buff! It is for HEALTH!

So many women I know are afraid to lift weight because they believe they will become hugely muscular and look like a female bodybuilder. Please throw this idea out of your head! What people don’t realize it that is it actually very hard to increase your muscle size to the extent that body builders do, even when they are trying as hard as they can to do it!

Well, if it doesn’t make up huge and buff, what does it do???

+ Decreases your risk of heart disease

+ Helps you lose weight

+ Decreases your overall blood pressure

+ Improves your cholesterol profile

+ Decreases sarcopenia (a loss in muscle mass) as we get older

+ Improves your balance, strength, daily functioning, and quality of life

However, the real and most convincing reason for me to lift weights is for the health of my BONES.

According to Wolff’s Law, bones will adapt to the pressure that are put on them. Therefore, the more stress you put on your bones (by doing weight-bearing activities), the stronger your bones will become. There are two types of cells in our bodies that work to maintain bone health – osteoclasts and osteoblasts. Osteoclasts will break down bone on a routine basis to get rid of cells that are not healthy. Osteoblasts will build bone back up, and will end up making the bone stronger afterward. The more we lift weights, the most active these cells become, and increase the overall health of the bone.

The pace of how much bone breaks down and builds up is typically matched (or even favors on the side of building bone when we are kids). However, once we reach the age of around 30-35, the activity of these cells start to change. Instead of being matched in pace, the osteoclasts start to outpace the osteoblasts, meaning that we break down bone more than we build it up. Translation – we start to LOSE bone density we reach this age.

What can we do??? First, if we are YOUNGER than this age, it is extremely important that we build our bones up as strong as we can, so that we when we reach 30-35 we start with the highest baseline possible before we ever start losing our bone. If we are OLDER than 30-35, lifting weights becomes crucial in order to decrease this bone loss as much as possible (we can’t build the bones up stronger, but we can decrease the rate at which we are losing bone density). So, break out those weights and hop to it!!

What do you really need to do to protect our bones? Well, it comes down to weight bearing activities. Cardio activities like walking, jogging, running are great (but not swimming or biking for our bone health). However, that really only impacts our bones in our lower extremities. Lifting weights or other resistance (body weight) exercises work great to keep all our bones healthy!!!

Wondering how often and how heavy you should lift (for bones health, strength, or whatever)? It is good to incorporate it at least 2-3 days into your routine, and how much you lift depends on your goals. Check out the picture below for details.