Regular strength training makes muscles stronger and more resilient. You don’t necessarily need a gym with a weight bench and huge weights. Muscle strength can also be trained with gymnastic exercises at home – with your own body weight or with small dumbbells, rubber bands and balls. But that is not the only positive effect.
If you regularly challenge your muscles, you stimulate your immune system. The load on the muscles causes various reactions throughout the body: the immune system, metabolic and hormonal systems are stimulated. The body releases anti-inflammatory messenger substances and the formation of immune cells in the blood is stimulated by the release of adrenaline.
Regular sports stimuli on the body also lead to a training effect: the body’s defenses become stronger and work increasingly more effectively. Colds are much less common in recreational athletes than in untrained people.
Regular strength training even has a cancer-protective effect. As the Cancer Information Service (KID) of the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) reports, physically active people are statistically less likely to develop certain types of cancer than the average population. But why is that? According to cancer experts, the anti-inflammatory effect of exercise plays an important role.
Exercise counteracts chronic inflammatory processes in the body, which have a harmful effect on the immune system and the body’s own DNA repair mechanisms. Further research is needed to understand exactly how exercise prevents the development of cancer.
Strength training also supports the fight against excess kilos. Building muscle supports weight loss in two ways: on the one hand, the body itself needs energy for strength training and burns 200 to 300 calories per half hour. On the other hand, the muscles continue to draw energy even after training: for growth, regeneration and for muscle supply.
The more muscles a person has, the more energy he burns – even while sitting on the couch. Roughly speaking, each kilogram of muscle mass burns between 50 and 100 extra calories per day. Strength training helps promote normal body weight.
Blood sugar levels can also be regulated with strength training. As the German Diabetes Aid reports, strengthened muscles ensure better sugar metabolism and more effective fat burning. Insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion are increased by muscle work. This not only helps prevent diabetes mellitus.
Diabetes patients also benefit from their muscles. Muscle activity lowers blood sugar, blood fat and blood pressure. Some diabetes patients manage to reduce the dosage of their medications with the help of regular exercise. According to diabetes experts, strength training is especially effective in combination with endurance sports.
The extra muscle mass that results from regular strength training has another advantage: muscle tissue supports the skeleton and makes the body stronger and more resilient. Strength training also has an activating and protective effect on joints, tendons and ligaments – and activates the development of bone substance. The risk of injuries and falls is reduced, back pain and osteoporosis are prevented.
The Federal Self-Help Association for Osteoporosis emphasizes: “Strength before endurance. Without strong muscles, there are no strong bones.” Research has shown that regular strength training of at least two training sessions per week can increase bone density by up to twelve percent.
As you get older, regular strength training also helps you cope with everyday life more easily. For example, strong muscles make it easier to climb stairs, carry shopping bags and open bottles. Elderly people gain valuable independence through regular muscle training.
As the German Hypertension League emphasizes, strength training in addition to endurance training helps prevent and treat high blood pressure. Although there is a significant increase in blood pressure during strength training, the long-term effects on blood pressure are certainly positive if the exercises are performed correctly.
During training it is important that the upper blood pressure value does not exceed 200 mmHg. To achieve a positive effect on blood values, patients with high blood pressure should exercise at least twice a week, the experts advise.
The German Heart Foundation recommends that people who start exercising for the first time, patients with chronic diseases and patients with cardiovascular diseases, have their individual exercise limits determined by their doctor when starting strength training. Subsequent training should be tailored to the doctor’s advice and carried out under expert guidance to avoid mistakes.
According to the Heart Foundation, a typical training error is breathing. This can lead to unwanted blood pressure peaks, because the heart then has to pump blood into the body against increased resistance. You will learn, for example, how athletes avoid forced breathing and how good breathing techniques work under the guidance of a physiotherapist or experienced trainer.
(Ann-Kathrin Landschein/t-online,mra)
source: watson
I’m Maxine Reitz, a journalist and news writer at 24 Instant News. I specialize in health-related topics and have written hundreds of articles on the subject. My work has been featured in leading publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Healthline. As an experienced professional in the industry, I have consistently demonstrated an ability to develop compelling stories that engage readers.
