Strength Training Benefits
Strength training, sometimes referred to as resistance training or weight training, has become one of the most popular forms of exercise for both enhancing physical fitness and conditioning athletes. When participating in a strength training program, you can expect to increase strength, increase muscle size, increase fat-free mass, decrease body fat, and improve sports performance.
Strength training can be essential in battling some diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Because of its ability to increase bone density, strength training is the best form of exercise to treat and prevent osteoporosis.
General programs for fitness, sports, or other activities should only be viewed as a starting point for an individual program. Depending on your goals, experience level, where you are at in your fitness or athletic endeavors, and how you are responding or progressing, a strength training program will have to be personalized in order for you to maximize its benefits.
In a nutshell, strength training is an essential part of any fitness or athletic program.
Strength Training Focus
Regardless of your goal, strength training should focus on the upper body, lower body, and the core. Sometimes all these areas of the body are targeted in a single training session as a full-body workout. Other times body parts are trained on alternate days as a split routine. Depending on your fitness or athletic objectives, exercises emphasizing certain muscle groups over others is important. However, in the grander scheme, a strength training program should be a total-body endeavor.
Strength Training Equipment Options
While there are various body parts that have to be tended to for a well-rounded strength training program, there are various training equipment options that can be used in order to achieve this objective. Having multiple ways to work each body part is tremendously helpful to stave off boredom to keep you motivated and consistent. Variety is also helpful for those who have favorite equipment they like working with or if they have limited access to certain types of equipment.
Below are the ten most common types of equipment used when building a strength training program. For ease of explanation, the back is used as the body part while illustrating a sample exercise that can be completed with each of the ten types of equipment.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
The above information on strength training basics was not meant to be extensive. The goal was to briefly highlight the benefits of strength training, how a strength training program should be approached, and to show you there are various equipment options to work on each muscle group.
The hardest part of any strength training program is building one that is personalized to you and your goals. Whether you are a beginner or advanced or you have a fitness or athletic goal, take the guess work out and let an Online Personal Trainer build your customized program.
Haven’t joined my NEWSLETTER yet?
CLICK BELOW to JOIN NOW!
