MANY people are interested in long-lasting figures. The body’s that are toned, six packs, and muscle definition but does strength training only help those? How many know that strength training increases muscle tone? Improves Balance. Maintains bone density to name a few.
My name is Ropafadzo Amanda Banhwa I am a Physiotherapist who is highly invested in the physique of a human body. My fitness journey started with my weight loss journey where I lost from 142kg to 79kg in approximately 11 months. Most people wonder how I did not develop loose skin. Well, this is where strength training comes into play.
In 2013 when I started my journey it began as a gym, cycling indoor, spin and step class. Most of you know me as the Comrades Marathon runner but my journey in running only started when I had lost over 40kgs. Strength training is very important for human function. It helps improve bone density and muscle condition. This is very important as you grow older because it preserves our muscle which gets lost with age.
For weight loss, muscle burns more calories than fat. So, when one weight lifts and trains the body to build toned muscle they tend to have a higher basal metabolic rate. This generally means your body burns more calories at rest than when you have less muscle. Strength training will help you achieve high muscle content and lead to a better basal metabolic rate.
I’m not implying that cardio is not important but strength training at least three times a week will help you get more muscle than just cardio. You need 150 minutes of cardio and three sessions of weight lifting per week.
Also, weight lifting or strength training does not imply you have to join the gym. You can also do lots of exercise in the comfort of your home. These include body-weighted squats, walking lunges, burpees, tricep dips, pressups, pullups etc. If one needs to gain muscle they have to lift heavy with lower reps, but if one needs to tone and become lean or faster in running then you lift low weight but higher reps. So, one needs to know their reason for wanting to lift weights.
For runners which is more of what I am linked to, we need strength training to reduce injuries. When we run we tend to use the same muscles over and over again so when we then strength train we make the whole body a functional chain. This allows all muscles that aren’t concentrated on by the running to be worked on. Hence, as runners, we need to make time for strength training and cross-training.
For those who believe in more muscle for weight loss then strength training daily will help them to have more burning machines in their body. In this case, muscle is the burning machine. So, training daily in the gym for at least 30 minutes will allow you to create more muscle. It’s not easy to train all muscle groups in one day hence one can train the whole body in different angles daily.
I believe when one trains different muscle groups of the body daily it allows the other muscle groups to rest and then be trained again the other day.
However, my theories of strength training still focus on training the whole body daily. For example, on day one, four exercises upper body, four exercises in the mid-body and four exercises in the lower body. Then you do three to four sets of 10 of those exercises.
Day two you do again the same routine but on different types of exercises. Some exercises will stimulate the same muscles but some will stimulate new muscles. This done frequently like four to six times a week will allow the whole muscles of the body to be targeted overall.
Ropafadzo Amanda Banhwa is a Physiotherapist who is highly invested in the physique of the human body. She can be contacted on 0713674274 and 0774574083.
