Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Strength

When it comes to changing your body and improving your health strength is king. Muscle mass is very metabolically active and requires more energy to maintain. This means that by having more muscle you will have a higher metabolism. Strength is also a much more needed quality in everyday life than cardio. Strength is necessary to carry bags, move furniture, lift your kids, and many other things that you do everyday.

So how do you build strength. Resistance training that incorporates progressive resistance is the way to get stronger. Resistance training with dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, or body weight exercises all work. The key to getting stronger is to use progressive resistance, which means that the amount of weight that you lift is gradually increasing. Strength training is a process that your body adapts to, so every time you repeat a workout you should expect to do better. You can do better by either lifting the same weight for more repetitions or lifting more weight. As long as you constantly try to improve your workouts with progressive resistance you will build strength. The most common mistake that people make is that they do not push themselves to do better in their workouts. The easy thing to do is to settle and do what you did last time, but this approach will not provide you any gains because once your body adapts you will no longer benefit from that workout.

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