Weight Training For Everyone

Regardless of your reasons for working out, you should add weight-training to your regimen as soon as you can. Too many people avoid weight training because they seem to believe that it's only for bodybuilders, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The misperception that gaining muscular bulk is an automatic result of weight training makes most true bodybuilders laugh. In reality, bulking up takes a very specific method of weight training combined with a specific diet. Oh...and it takes an incredible amount of work.

If you don't intentionally bust your butt with the intention of getting bulky, you're not going to get bulky. That being said, why should weight training be added to your regimen? It doesn't matter if you're trying to slim down, tone up, or just get increase overall health, weight training will help you. Here's how:

1. It Increases Your Metabolism
Increased metabolism gives you more energy on a daily basis, helps prevent you from getting fat, and helps boost your immune system. Weight training increases your metabolism by toning and building your muscles. Muscle is an extremely active bodily tissue and it burns through calories even when you sleep. A pound of muscle burns an average of 35 calories simply sustaining its own existence.

2. It Will Help Prevent Injuries
The majority of the most common injuries people sustain, outside of car accidents and other serious trauma, are caused by weak muscles. Weight training builds the strength of your muscles, which will help you keep from suffering injuries due to everyday activities. Back injuries, the most common serious non-trauma related injury in adults, are almost exclusively caused by weak back muscles.

3. It Helps Stave Of Aging Effects
A well-rounded weight training program helps maintain your flexibility, stamina and balance as well as lowering blood pressure and cholesterol. Studies are increasingly demonstrating that many of the things we have considered "part of the aging process" are, in fact, due to the decreased activity we tend to experience as we age. Weight training is extremely effective in helping to combat these effects.

4. It Makes You Sexier
While I'd like to imagine that everyone who works out is doing it to be healthier for themselves, the reality is that most people work out to maintain their attractiveness. Like it or not, we live in a society where having a toned body is sexier than either a fat body or a skinny body. Without weight-training, your exercise regimen will eliminate the fat, but you'll also burn muscle and end up being skinny. If you're looking to increase your appearance, weight training is really a must.

5. It Will Give You The Body You Want
I'm operating under the assumption that you're not interested in having a fat and squishy body or you wouldn't be reading this article. Regardless of the physique you're striving for, weight training will help you get there. If you want to get big, using very heavy weights and doing short sets will build big and bulky muscles. If you want a toned body, lifting medium-to-heavy weights in longer sets will build longer and leaner muscles. Ladies, weight training will also help you get near-perfect symmetry and emphasize your natural curves.

Hopefully, I've helped eradicate whichever myths of weight training have been preventing you from taking up the practice. There really is no reason to exercise without a weight training regimen and, in many cases, you're making it harder for you to reach whatever goal you have by avoiding it.