May 21
4
Why Everybody Should Be Building Muscle
Muscle isn’t just about getting a pump to create content for social media. Muscle is actually really important for our health and longevity.
Why is maintaining and building muscle important?
Muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of longevity. The less muscle you have, the higher your chance of all causes of mortality.
Unfortunately as we age, we start to lose muscle mass. This includes muscle we naturally have, even if we never lifted a weight in our lives. It’s a slow and gradual process, so we often don’t notice it happening. It’s the reason getting up out of a chair, climbing stairs, and carrying bags groceries becomes more of a challenge as we age.
This muscle loss leads to frailty in later life, which is a bigger deal than many people realise, increasing risk of falls with potentially serious outcomes.
While most think of walking or running when thinking of exercise, and these forms of exercise are good for our heart and keeping us active and mobile, they won’t do much for building or maintaining muscle mass.
So what can we do to prevent this gradual loss of muscle?
Strength training!
Strength training involves moving your muscles against a load. This can be bodyweight or using weights.
Strength training is one of the best things we can do to improve our health and keep us strong and physically able in the longterm.
As a bonus, strength training can improve posture, and help reduce low back pain. Plus look better in clothes, and in less clothes at the beach.
Sadly, strength training can’t do the laundry for us. Or bring us upstairs when too tired to go up to bed. Or make us a cup of tea. But it does make it possible to be able to do those things for ourselves, now, and as we get older.
How can someone start strength training
The best thing is we can start strength training at any age. Even without a gym or even weights. Although those things can be useful. But to start we just need to create resistance for the muscles to work against. This can be as simple as bodyweight squats, push ups, etc.
It’s not about training to exhaustion, or building bulging muscles. It’s about using proper form and gradually getting stronger.
This is where a personal trainer can be invaluable. An experienced personal trainer can help accelerate the learning process and set you on the right path for longterm success.
If that has inspired you to start strength training, and you would like someone to help you get started, I offer 1-to-1 personal training. You can contact me by email or direct message on Instagram for more information.
email – gowing.david@gmail.com (use “personal training” as the title)
Instagram – @david_gowing
