More muscle can save your life
What’s the difference between a dreary life of frustration, pain and chronic anxiety and a life of enjoyment, options, less stress and no pain? Properly performed exercise is the vehicle that will move you towards this level of fulfillment.
If you are looking to buy a book on exercise, I highly recommend Body By Science by Doug McGuff M.D and John Little. The book explains the what, why and how of strength training that is backed by scientific research. The eleven chapters contain a wealth of information including graphs and diagrams (great for us visual folks).
Some of the benefits of this unique strength training program can be achieved in as little as 12 minutes a week:
- Build muscle size and strength
- Optimize cardiovascular health
- Ramp up your metabolism
- Lower cholesterol
- Increase insulin sensitivity
- Improve flexibility
- Manage arthritis and chronic back pain
- Build bone density
- Reduce your risk for diabetes, cancer, heart attack, and more
I agree that 12 minutes per week sounds a bit unrealistic yet extremely intriguing as we figure out how to include much needed weight-training into our hectic lives. I’m forever telling my clients (especially the females) that they need to incorporate weight or resistance training into their fitness program. Weight-training is crucial to building strong bones to fight osteoporosis, improving cardiovascular health and burning fat (better/faster than cardio) to name just a few.
I first learned about high-intensity training when I met Shaun Angel, co-owner of Flex151. Flex151 incorporates this style of training in their Newburgh, IN facility.
So if the above list isn’t enough to convince you to learn more or experience a free session at Flex151, maybe this will.
More muscle can save your life. For example, if you were in a severe traffic accident and were admitted to the intensive care unit, the “start” point from which you would atrophy all of your organs is predicated on your degree of muscle mass. Or, how long it would take before you reach multisystem failure and die is directly linked to your level of muscle mass because all of your other organ weights are going to be proportional to that.
Bottom line, everyone needs to incorporate weight-training into their fitness regimen. Cardio is not enough.