Your Fitness

Everyone should be doing weight training but I find that so many people are avoiding it.  I hear a
tremendous number of misguided excuses for not doing so.

Here are a few of them.

Weight training is too difficult on my joints.

If you are doing weight training correctly it should not be difficult on your joints.  In fact lifting weights will help strengthen your joints.  If when you are beginning you have some still joints then lower the amount of weight that you are lifting.  Don’t quit altogether.

I don’t want to get bulked up or muscle bound.  

This is often a concern of women.  Trust me you will not get bulked up unless you want to and even if you want to it is difficult to achieve.  What weight lifting will add is tone and muscularity.  You will not develop rippling biceps, big chest, big legs and shoulders overnight.  Many who have been trying to achieve this and have worked very hard to do so still can’t reach their goals.  Most women do not even have the genetics to get large muscles no matter how hard they try.

I have heard that muscle turns to fat if you stop lifting weights.

Whoever told you this lie needs to go back and repeat their high school biology class.  Muscle tissue cannot convert to fat cells.  It is biologically impossible.  Muscle will merely atrophy (get smaller) without use.  It cannot become fat.  What can happen however, is that the less muscle you have the fatter you can become.  You will burn more calories to maintain muscle.  Therefore the less muscle you have the fewer calories that you will burn.

I am too old to lift weights.

This is another falsehood.  You can benefit from lifting weights at any age and research has shown the
ability to increase muscle mass and strength no matter what the age.

Weight lifting takes too long.  

If you do it correctly your weight lifting session should not last any more that 20 - 25 minutes.  That is, unless you are walking around talking too much or taking long breaks in between sets.  If this is happening then you need to change how you workout.  Exercise first, socialize later.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of weight lifting.

You will build muscle strength.  

Not only will you build muscle strength but you will also build tendon and ligament strength.  This is
beneficial to your joints and will help prevent injury to these joints in the future.  And of course
we all would like to be a little stronger.

You will improve your appearance.

A toned, muscular body looks better than one that has no tone.  You will have more confidence to wear the
swimwear of your choice and will in general feel better about yourself.  Just don’t let others catch you
standing in front of a mirror and admiring yourself.

You will burn fat faster.

Weight lifting will fire up your metabolism.  As I mentioned earlier it requires more energy to maintain
muscle.  This means that the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn on an everyday basis.  The mere presence of muscle will do battle with your fat.

I could go on but I think you get the picture.  Everyone needs to be lifting weights.  So what are you
waiting for.  Get off the computer and head to the gym!

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