Weight lifting can improve your life

By weight lifting, we're referring to resistance training done with free weights or weight machines. Weightlifting (one word) is an olympic sport and is not the focus of this article.

Recently, fitness researchers have been showing more interest in weight lifting. While aerobic or cardiovascular exercise has been recommended by experts for a while now, the endorsement of strength training is more recent.

The main reason for recommendation of weight lifting is because as one grows older, their body normally sees shinkage in both number and size of muscle fibers. Those fibers also become less responsive to signals from the central nervous system. Together, these factors contribute to losses in coordination, balance and strength. As a rule, after age 30, inactive people can lose up to 10 percent of their lean muscle mass each decade. Weight lifting can slow, and frequently reverse, the declines in muscle mass, bone density, and strength that accompany aging.

Weight lifting, besides the obvious building of muscle, can also strengthen bones and help older people maintain their independence by keeping them strong enough to do everyday tasks. Since increased muscle burns more calories - both when exercising and at rest - it also helps to avoid weight gain.

Success with weight lifting doesn't require a lot of time

You don't have to be in the gym for two hours a day, five days a week to see results. Actually, such a schedule is not recommended for most people, as it will eventually induce a state of what is referred to as "overtraining", which can actually cause one to get weaker rather than stronger, in addition to a number of other undesirable symptoms. In reality, it's not necessary to join a commercial gym at all, as one can perform a basic weight lifting program of one set of six to twelve exercises two or three times a week at home using a home gym or free weights and get great results. Such a routine can easily be kept to twenty minutes.