Thanks for stopping by! At Ibex Strength, we believe everyone can be a little better tomorrow than they are today, and we have coaches here to help you do that. If you’re here, you’re probably wanting reasons to tell people to lift, or maybe to find the motivation yourself to go in the gym and pump some iron. Well here are the 6 Reasons Everyone Should Start Strength Training
1. Muscle takes up less space than fat
If you want to be lean, look slim, and feel great, having muscle helps. Muscle is a much more dense tissue, so it takes up less space. Having more muscle relative to your body weight will change how you look and feel. So if you’re lifting to look better or to compete in a sport with weight classes, strength training of some form to keep your muscles healthy is a must.
2. Muscles burn more energy than fat
Basically, in order for you to exist, you need to burn energy. Your cells require it in the form of ATP, so your body is constantly producing ATP through various energy pathways. Most of the energy is expended to maintain your brain, liver, kidneys, heart and your muscles. If you’ll notice, there’s only one thing on that list that you can exert some control over how much of it you have: your muscles. You can make your heart do more work with cardio, and being active will help your muscles not atrophy, but the biggest bang for your buck in terms of increasing your BMR is to build muscle. If any of the other organs enlarge, you probably have a serious medical condition. If your muscles get bigger, you’ll just look different and burn more energy at rest. So keep eating healthy and moving against resistance regularly.
3. Lifting weights can reduce your stress levels
This is going to sound like a bro-mantra, but when you can’t control a lot in your life you can control your lifts. Numerous studies have found lifting weights can help lessen the symptoms of, and help prevent depression. This New York Times article goes on at length about it. Now if you’re suffering from depression, never be afraid to reach out and get help whether it is from a professional, a friend, or just someone in your community. While I’m not going to sit here and promise you that doing deadlifts will cure your MDD, as someone who has dealt with MDD and PTSD for almost half of my life, I know that strength training has helped me manage the symptoms of those conditions. It gives me a sense of control over something and it's cathartic to go in and pull through a heavy deadlift or smoke a snatch PR. It makes me feel like I’m improving in some aspect of my life and it’s a simple formula that I understand: Do the work, get recovered, come back stronger. So start strength training regularly to help your mood out!
4. Resistance training can help you sleep better
Do you struggle to fall and stay asleep? Well I’m not about to try and sell you a mattress, but being physically active has been shown to help improve the quality of your sleep. Studies like this, this, and this all showed that physical activity, and especially resistance training helped people fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and can help you have a better overall quality of sleep. So if you want to start sleeping through the night, try doing squats till you’re really, really tired.
5. Resistance training helps your bone density
That’s right we’re going to talk about your bones. Your bone is actually a living tissue: It’s comprised of a network of collagen proteins with calcium-phosphates injected to give it rigidity. Your bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt. That’s right, you replace your bones constantly in a process called remodelling. From birth until about age 30, you will gain more bone mass than you lose in remodelling. After age 30 it starts to reverse and you will slowly lose more bone mass than you replace. At some point around 30 years old, you reach something called peak bone mass. What your specific peak bone mass will be is determined by genetics, nutrition and exercise habits. You have direct control over two of those factors, so working out on the regular and eating healthy can help you build bone mass at a young age to help lessen the risk of osteoporosis later in life. Strength training for older adults can also help them preserve and maintain what bone mass they do have.
While all older adults can develop osteoporosis, those at the highest risk are post menopausal women. In fact research has shown that about half of women will break a bone at some point in their life due to osteoporosis. So if you want to help older women in your life have a better quality of life as they age, convince them to lift some weights!
6. It is the ultimate healthy habit.
Lifting weights is one of the best physical things you can do for yourself, but that is not what makes it the best healthy habit. Beyond the physical adaptations and benefits, you can also use lifting to develop a healthy image of yourself, a healthy relationship with food, a healthy mindset focused on goal setting, it can help you become more consistent and even be a help in building a healthy social life. That’s what makes lifting weights so great for you. The reward is not just the physical benefits of being stronger, having less body fat, looking better, but all of the little things you pick up to help you get the most out of strength training: Going to bed on time, setting goals, pursuing goals, making friends, eating healthy. Every session does not need to be your best ever for you to reap all those benefits, but if you practice regularly strength training I promise you will experience some of them. The reason we want to make strength training more approachable and accessible to people of all backgrounds is so that everyone can share in that experience!