Strength Training Is Essential

Strength training can have profound effects on the body.  The main results are to promote muscle growth, improve muscle tone and increase definition.  Strength training allows you to ‘sculpt’ your body to the shape you want it to be.  If achieving a great body is your goal – resistance training is equally important for men as it is for women.  Weight loss, even with the best dieting plan and aerobic training will lead to both fat and muscle reduction.  Therefore, losing weight alone can have disappointing results.  This is because your body shape does not change as much as one might expect, the main change is just the size.  While weight training actually changes the body shape.  By selecting the exercises carefully you can manipulate your body shape and move closer towards the ideal body and weight.

Moreover, vigorous weight training burns a lot of calories.  Also, it increases your metabolism for many days after an intense workout.  This means that your body will be using more calories throughout the day even when not exercising.  Weight loss and body shaping through a good diet, an aerobic exercise and an effective strength training routine can be very easy and does not have to take up a lot of time.  Two to three hours per week of effective training combined with good eating habits will lead to the perfect body.

For women especially weight training is important in preventing osteoporosis.  Weight training coupled with healthy eating and sufficient calcium intake increases bone density.  Accumulating this effect over adolescence will help prevent osteoporosis.

Thinking that strength training can make you look anything like a stereotypical bodybuilder is incorrect.  This is especially so for training females, because women have less ability to grow muscle.  This is due to women producing approximately ten times less testosterone than men, with testosterone being very important for muscle growth.