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What is Strength Training?

Strength training is often referred to as resistance training or weight training. It essentially includes physical exercise designed to increase the strength and endurance of your muscles by targeting a specific muscle or group of muscles against external forces.

Strength training can be considered as an activity or set of workouts that help different muscles in your body get stronger. When someone has strong muscles, they have more stamina and strength for everyday activities. If the muscles are strong, their physique will heal quickly from injuries and burn caloriesmore effectively.

The most important thing to understand is that strengthening training isn’t solely about bodybuilders who lift weight in the gym. Training your body is beneficial for individuals of all fitness levels and ages in various ways. It can be great for weight loss, preventing muscle mass loss due to aging, and aid patients who suffer from chronic health issues like arthritis, obesity, or heart conditions.

5 Different Forms Of Strength Training

The fundamental principle behind strength training is to use resistance and weights through a series of repeated exercises. These exercises then change the strength, endurance, and size of your muscles or a specific group of muscles. Although, depending on the weights or resistance that you are using, there are various types of strength training out there.

The five different forms of strength training include:

Resistance Band Training

Resistance bands or resistance tubing can also be used for strength training. Since resistance bands are flexible, exercising with them requires a force that helps you train your muscles. This lets you attain impressive results via the extension and contraction of muscles. You can even use multiple resistance bands at once to change the resistance or the force required to make your strength training even more intense.

Bodyweight Training

Simple bodyweight training exercises are an excellent option for strength, flexibility, and overall health gains. They are easy to do anywhere and cost nothing since you don’t need any fitness equipment for the same. And since there are all kinds of bodyweight training exercises like squats, push-ups, planks, lunges, pull-ups, crunches, and many more, bodyweight training is perfect for all fitness levels.

Cable Machine Training

Cable machines use weight stacks connected to pulleys or cams by cables. They only move in one direction. Cable machines are great for anyone new to strength training. This training isolates one muscle at a time and provides controlled motion. And depending on the weight, it can also be used for intense workouts.

Free Weight Training

In free weight training, weights don’t need to be attached to a machine. This can include using dumbbells or barbells depending on the exercise. Start small with some dumbbells if you prefer to train at home. And if you are experienced, you can use heavier dumbbells and barbells with weights at the gym. Free weight training allows you to add or remove weights as per your expertise and the exercise. However, make sure that your form is correct else you may face injuries while using heavy weights.

Weight Machine Training

Other than cable machine training, you can even find weight machines in many gyms. While they might not allow natural and free movement like free weights, weight machine training helps you safely maintain the correct form. However, Weight machines are generally more expensive, regardless of whether you purchase one for home use or pay for a gym membership.

6 Wonderful Benefits of Strength Training Exercises

Irrespective of the type of strength training you are going for, it is going to offer various benefits. And down below, you can find some of the best benefits of strength training exercises:

Better Cardiovascular Health

Visceral fat is a type of fat that gets deposited around your abdominal organs like the liver and the intestines. And a higher quantity of this fat can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. This is where strength training comes into play since it can help you lose visceral fat. More importantly, since strength training also increases your blood oxygen flow and lowers your blood pressure, it can help in improving your heart health as well.

Reduce Body Fat

The size of your muscles determines your basal metabolic rate or BMR. As you build lean muscle mass, your metabolic rate increases which essentially means that you will burn more calories. Not only that but strength training will increase your TDEE over time. And all of these changes will help you lose fat from all over your body since your calorie consumption will change.

Improved Quality of Life

Strength training can enhance your overall health and help you carry out everyday tasks easily. It can also prevent injuries in your body joints as you grow muscle mass. The development of muscles can also lead to better body balance and mobility. And this will allow you to stay active and fit even as you age.

Develop Muscles

Other than losing weight, you would also want to increase your muscle mass to get a muscular body if you want the body of your dreams. Apart from having a great-looking body, strength training will also help you prevent muscle loss from your body in the later stages of your life. In people over 30 years of age, this can prevent joint aches and muscle loss since your body’s muscle mass naturally declines with age.

Chronic Disease Prevention

There are various chronic diseases that can be caused due to an unhealthy lifestyle. Some of these chronic diseases include fatty liver, diabetes, heart conditions, arthritis, and much more. And if you are physically active with activities like strength training, it can definitely help in preventing such issues.

6 Strength Training Exercises for Beginners

In case you are also interested in strength training, then you can check out these 6 strength training exercises for beginners. These exercises are great for those who are just beginning because they will help in learning basic exercises forms while building muscle mass:

• Squat: Squat is a great compound exercise that not only trains your legs but also targets your back and abdominal muscles.
• Plank: While you may have to go for plank on palms as a beginner, the plank is great for targeting your core muscles along with legs, arms, and shoulder muscles.
• Jumping Jacks: Jumping jacks can be a great option for HIIT workouts since you can train your whole body at once. It primarily works your leg and shoulder muscles while keeping your lungs and heart active.
• Glute Bridge: Glute bridges focus on one of the most powerful muscles in the lower part of the body, the glutes. They also help build the strength of your legs and stabilize your core.
• Push Up: A push-up is a press exercise that targets various muscles in your upper body, including your shoulders, chest, triceps, and more. And as per your variation, it can even be ideal for beginners.
• Lunges: Lunges can be another great way to train your leg muscles along with lower back muscles. It can even have variations like static lunges, walking lunges, and reverse lunges.

Precautions for Strength Training

Before you start with the above or any other strength training exercise, you should keep some precautions in mind including the following:

• Make sure to warm up before and cool down after your workouts for 5-10 minutes. Running or brisk walking can be a great warm-up for beginners and stretching is ideal for post-workout cool-downs.
• Training major muscle groups one by one 3 to 5 times per week is ideal for beginners.
• Maintaining proper form while exercising is vital for preventing any injuries and maximizing muscle gain.
• As you work out regularly, your muscles will break down. Your body can take 48-72 hours for a certain muscle group to fully recover. So make sure to take a break from training a given muscle group until it fully recovers.

Conclusion

Strength training can provide various health benefits including a lower risk of diabetes and heart disease, making your bones stronger, improving mood and mental health and boosting self-esteem. And strength training is much more than just lifting weights at the gym. You can even go for highly effective workouts at your home with your body weight, resistance bands, free weights, and much more. 

With the basics of strength training explained above, you can slowly train your body and improve your lifestyle with time. As your muscle mass grows with time, you will be able to lift much heavier weights with ease. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, the benefits of strength training are beneficial for everyone.

Whether you are burdened with work or your studies, it can be quite tough to stay healthy. Things can get quite complicated when you have to plan your meals and take care of your nutrition as well. And if not taken care of, you may gain weight or lose weight at extreme levels. And while people are generally aware of overweight issues, people need to know more about underweight issues.

Being underweight can have serious implications in the long term leading to a weakened immune system, poor bone health, fertility problems, nutritional deficiencies, and more! Apart from a poor lifestyle, certain medical conditions can be responsible for making you underweight.

People try out a lot of different remedies to reach their ideal healthy weight range like working out in the gym and other diet forms hoping that it would help. But, in most cases, they miss out on the right strategy suitable for them and are unable to see results. In this article, we will understand more about the harm of being underweight and how you can gain weight in a healthy way.

How to Check if you’re Underweight?

In the current day and age, all of us see the crazy glorification of being skinny on the internet. Thus, it can be hard to determine whether you are skinny with a healthy BMI, or you are dangerously close to being underweight. The most common way used by the majority is to calculate one’s body mass index or BMI. It is a measure that considers your height and weight and gives out a number through which you can determine if you lie in the healthy weight category or underweight.

A BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered to be a healthy weight range. But if you have a BMI less than 18.5, then it means that you are underweight. If you fall into this category, it’s time to make changes in your lifestyle for the better.

Why you can’t Gain Weight?

If you aren’t able to gain weight, the chances are that you have already tried stuffing yourself with food. You may have even gone for hours of exercise without seeing any progress. This indicates that there is something you are not doing right. While there are various factors at play, it is your daily calorie intake that will help you with gaining weight. This basically means that without consuming enough calories, you won’t gain weight no matter what you do. To be more specific, you need to be in a calorie surplus to gain weight in a healthy way.

However, there might be a few cases where you are already in a calorie surplus but still cannot gain weight. This can happen due to various other reasons some of which include the following:

Factors Affecting your Weight Gain

• Fast Metabolism: A fast metabolism means that your body burns all consumed calories at a very fast rate. Thus, the current calorie surplus you are in may not be sufficient to gain weight.
• Intense Physical Activity: Since regular and intense physical activity burns a lot of calories, you may not be eating enough calories for the same. In other words, you might not be in a true calorie surplus and unable to gain weight.
• Medical Conditions: Certain medical conditions like hyperthyroidism, diabetes, PCOS, and others can affect your appetite and metabolism. And for many people affected by these, it can cause unintentional weight loss. If you have disturbed hormones, that too can affect your weight.
• Mental Health Issues: In case you are unfamiliar, both your mental health and gut health affect each other due to the gut-brain connection. If you are going through any kind of mental health issues, then it can definitely affect your gut health and metabolism. And hence, it can affect your current weight.
• Family History: According to recent research, your weight might be affected due to genetic mutation. However, usually, families with a history of a low BMI tend to be underweight because of their common lifestyle habits.

Healthy Tips to Gain Weight

While there might be multiple reasons for you being underweight, you can still overcome them by making the right lifestyle changes. You simply need to make the right lifestyle changes and essentially get into a healthy calorie surplus. Some of the simple changes that you can make in your lifestyle to gain weight in a healthy way include the following:

1. Calorie-rich Food to Gain Weight

Your daily food intake plays the most important role in both weight gain as well as weight loss. When it comes to gaining weight, you can either start eating more or replace your current food meals with other calorie-dense options. Such calorie-rich food meals will allow you to increase your calorie intake without increasing your meal portions. However, it is highly important to make sure that you are also taking care of your nutrition intake for a healthy weight gain. For starters, you can try adding things like dates, nuts, smoothies, full-fat yogurt, eggs, meat, potatoes, and others to your diet. With the right combination of these and other food items, getting into a healthy calorie surplus will be fairly easy.

2. Regular Eating Intervals for Gaining Weight

Even with calorie-dense food options, you may have to eat a lot of food. And depending on your calorie surplus food intake, you may have to eat large food portions. Because that is not possible for everyone, you can simply eat at regular intervals instead of eating in large portions. Even if you have a small appetite, managing multiple meals in a day is much easier than eating large portions of food. In other words, try having multiple meals in a day instead of three major meals with extreme portion sizes.

3. Avoid Junk Food for Healthy Weight Gain

The other thing to keep in mind is that all calories are not equal. Since you would want to go for a healthy weight gain, choosing calories dense but healthy food is quite crucial. This is due to the reason that getting calories from unhealthy fats or refined sugarcan result in chronic diseases. So, avoid junk food and processed food and instead go for whole grains, more fruits and veggies, and natural food sources for healthy weight gain.

5. Track your Weight Gain Progress

Even with the right diet and a healthy lifestyle, you won’t get results until and unless you are consistent with your efforts. Hence, keeping track of your progress and diet through a food journal can help you in the process. This way you can find out the areas you are lacking and make further changes in your lifestyle accordingly.

6. Exercise Regularly to Gain Weight

While we have already discussed that how highly intense physical activity will burn too many calories, you should still exercise regularly. This is due to the reason that by staying physically active, you will feel more hungry and your appetite will increase. And since this will make you eat more, you will still be in a calorie surplus despite burning extra calories.

Conclusion

If you want healthy weight gain, it is actually easier than you think. And for the same, we have already discussed how to gain weight in a healthy way up above. We have suggested some ideas that you can easily incorporate into your daily life to achieve your body goals. Apart from all the various factors causing underweight issues, we have discussed the best ways to get in a calorie surplus for healthy weight gain.