BENEFITS OF EXERCISE
Main Benefits
It has been scientifically proven that being physically active can help combat health conditions and diseases, improve your brain health & mental attitude, boost energy levels, improve sleep, build confidence, reduce risk of injury, improves heart health, help manage blood sugar levels, promote greater mobility & flexibility, increase strength in bones & muscles, help manage weight and improve your ability to do everyday activities.
The physical & mental benefits are endless.
Burns Calories efficiently
Weight Training helps boost your metabolism in 2 ways;
- Increases your metabolic rate. Muscles are more metabolically efficient than fat mass, allowing you to burn more calories whilst at rest.
- Research shows that your metabolic rate is increased upto 72hrs after strength training (this means that you're still burning additional calories hours after your workout).
Increases Strength
Gaining strength allows you to perform daily tasks much easier and helps improve athletic performance in sports that require speed, power & strength. Training also preserves lean muscle mass, helps support your bones and can help reduce pain significantly.
Decreases fat (incl. abdominal fat)
Fat stored around the abdomen, especially visceral fat, is associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases ( heart disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer).
Multiple studies have shown that strength training exercises reduces abdominal and total body fat.
Improves mood & mental health
Need an emotional lift? Need to destress after a stressful day?
A gym session or brisk walk can help. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave your feeling happier, more relaxed and less anxious. You will feel better about yourself & your appearance when you exercise regularly, which will help boost your confidence and improve self esteem. It also helps you overcome challenges, work towards a goal and increase self-efficiency.
Combats health conditions & diseases
Worried about heart diseases? Hoping to prevent high blood pressure? No matter what your current weight is, being active boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol and it decreases unhealthy triglycerides and lowers total and LDL (bad) cholesterol. This keeps your blood flowing smoothly (improves circulation by strengthening the heart and blood vessels) which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Skeletal muscle helps increase insulin sensitivity. It also reduces bloody sugar levels by removing glucose from the blood and sending it to the muscle cells. As a result, greater muscle mass can help improve blood sugar. management.
Regular exercise is proven to help or manage many health problems and concerns, including strokes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, many types of cancer & arthritis.
Improves greater mobility & flexibity
Strength training increases joint range of motion (ROM) allowing for greater mobility and flexibility. Those with weaker muscles tend to have lower ROM and flexibility. For best results always ensure you're completing the full ROM of an exercise, in other words, utilise your full movement potential around a joint. ie; lowering yourself into a squat as far as you're able to go without compromising quality of form.)
Great for Muscles & Bones
Exercise plays a vital role in building and maintaining strong muscles & bones. Activities like weightlifting can stimulate muscle building when paired with adequate protein intake. This is because exercise helps release hormones that promote your muscles ability to absorb amino acids. This helps them grow and reduce their breakdown.
As people age, they tend to lose muscle mass and function, which can lead to an increased risk of injury. Exercise is essential to reducing muscle loss and. maintaining strength as you age. Exercise also helps build bone density when you're younger which helps prevent osteoporosis later in life. Weight bearing exercises put temporary stress on your bones, this sends a message to the bone building cells to take action and rebuild your bones stronger.
Makes you appear leaner
As you build more muscle and lose fat, you will appear leaner in appearance. This is because muscle is more dense than fat, meaning it takes up less space on your body pound for pound. Therefore, you may lose inches off your waist even if you don't see any change in the number on the scales. Losing body fat and building stronger & larger muscles showcase more muscle definition, creating a stronger & leaner appearance.
Lowers risk of injury
As strength training improves strength range of motion, mobility of your muscles, ligaments and tendons, this will reinforce strength around major joints like your knees, hips and ankles to provide additional protection against injury. Exercise helps correct muscular imbalances, (ie; having a stronger core, hamstrings and glutes takes the load off your lower back during lifting decreasing your risk of lower back injuries). Research found to reduce risk of injury by 33%.