Resistance Training: Why its fantastic!
- Brooke
- Feb 1, 2018
- 2 min read
What is resistance training?
Resistance training (or strength training) consists of exercises that involve the voluntarily activation (contraction) of a specific skeletal muscle against some form of resistance (body weight, free weights, other exercise modality). It has been proven to have profound benefits to health and the musculoskeletal system. Resistance training contributes to the maintenance of functionality and prevents osteoporosis (due to increasing bone mineral density making them stronger), lower back pain (by increasing the strength of supporting muscles) and other disabilities. Recent research has also shown that resistance training has positive effects on insulin resistance, resting metabolic rate, glucose metabolism, blood pressure, body fat and gastrointestinal transfer time, (which are all associated with cancer, heart disease and diabetes) due to the body adapting and becoming more efficient in response to the new bodily functions required from weight training (e.g. muscles more efficiently accessing glucose to provide energy to lift the resistance).
What is the best method?
Strength and muscle mass increases of a muscle group can be improved/maintained with just one training session a week. Your basic goal should be to apply resistance to the primary muscle group for 30-90 seconds (during a set) with a marginal overload (increase in resistance) compared to previous training sessions, this can either be done by increasing the resistance or the time that the resistance is being applied,or both.
This progressive overload is essential to increasing strength and muscle mass, as this slight passing of your previous threshold promotes a complicated reaction that increase protein synthesis for muscle growth. Training the same major muscle to soon can have a counterproductive effect as it adds addition stressors by disrupting homeostasis (internal balance) causing immunosuppressant effects, undermining recovery. Adequate recovery time is what provides the physiological adaptation to perform progressive overload next training session. It is beneficial to split up training each major muscle group due to fatigue of the assisting muscles to the primary-focus muscle will decrease your ability to perform progressive overload.
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