Hello!
Welcome to Monday.
This week we're looking at the importance of resistance training and how you can easily implement it in your weekly routine.
Importance
So many people live in dysfunctional bodies - they can’t move well, they have low energy, and they experience chronic pain and chronic illness. They also don’t have the body they want, they struggle to stay focused at work, and their mood is low.
Fortunately, we can address all of this with a simple resistance training routine. Resistance training is important for everyone, no matter their age, goals, or abilities. It improves every aspect of health and wellbeing.
Let's talk about a few of these benefits.
1. Age-related functionality
Resistance training is a powerful tool for minimizing age-related muscle loss and subsequently helps keep us mobile and functional well into old age. Resistance training builds and maintains muscle mass, and improves bone health and strength.
We lose about 6 pounds of muscle per decade after the age of 30. This is a lot. Fortunately, a regular resistance training routine can help mitigate this.
"Older adults who strength trained at least twice a week had 46 percent lower odds of death for any reason than those who did not. They also had 41 percent lower odds of cardiac death and 19 percent lower odds of dying from cancer." - 2016 study
2. Body composition
Resistance training is arguably the most powerful tool for improving your body composition - for both losing fat and gaining muscle. There are 3 key mechanisms behind this:
1. Increases metabolic efficiency and muscle mass. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn on a daily basis. It also increases the number of type II fibers we have in our muscles. Having more of these fibers leads to a reduction in fat mass as well as increasing insulin resistance.
2. Increases excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). This means you keep burning calories even after you’re done exercising.
3. Switches on a fat-burning mode. This increases the amount of energy we burn through a specific molecular pathway. A recent study showed that when we load our muscles they send a message via little vesicles to our fat cells, triggering them to start burning fat.
3. Blood sugar control
Resistance training is incredibly effective at regulating blood sugar. Blood sugar has a huge impact on our overall wellbeing and our ability to lose weight. If you can regulate your blood sugar levels, you'll find it much easier to lose those last few stubborn pounds.
4. Keeping our mitochondria young
“Six months of progressive resistance training, i.e., weight training that gets heavier over time, i.e., “lifting heavy stuff,” made the gene expression pattern of aging mitochondria significantly younger.” - Ben Greenfield
5. Protecting our DNA from aging
Resistance training protects the caps on our DNA (the telomeres) which prevents the DNA from getting damaged.
Other benefits
- Increased energy
- Improved mobility
- Improved mood
- Improved focus
- Increased sleep quality
Implementation
People think they don’t have the time, energy, or experience to lift weights. But the thing is, you don’t need to “lift weights”. You can use your body weight, resistance bands, or exercise machines. The key is simply to load your muscles.
An effective resistance training routine doesn’t take long - 30 minutes 2-3 times a week is enough to reap the benefits discussed above. You’ll also gain this time back because you’ll increase your energy and effectiveness in other areas of your life.
If you want to learn how you can implement an effective resistance training routine, fill out this questionnaire to see if you’d be a good fit for the next cohort of the Momentum Program, starting on September 5.
Here are some free links to articles where I discuss how you can create an effective strength training routine:
A Simple Framework for Ultimate Strength and Fitness
In this article, I outline the various ways in which you can work on your fitness, touching on a few different ways to strength train.
How You Can Work Out for 7 Minutes a Week and Still See Results
This is a simple but effective bodyweight routine.
Before You Go
The next cohort of the Momentum Program starts on September 5. If you'd like to join, fill out this survey and I'll be in touch with you soon!
If you’re struggling to see results from your training and want to shed fat, build muscle, and create a high-energy body, I'll show you how to fast-track your results with a simple but effective system that will help you boost your confidence, build a sustainable lifestyle, and achieve peak physical performance in just 12 weeks.