Judy Foreman Sings the Unsung Benefiits of Weight Training

After years of doing just about every kind of exercise but weight training, Boston Globe health writer Judy Foreman now promises to change her ways. Why? In this piece, Foreman gives us five good reasons:
1. The evidence for the value of strength training has grown so much that last year, the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new recommendations for healthy older adults that stressed emphasized the importance of weight lifting.
2. Strength training dramatically increases muscle mass. More muscle mass is good not just because it makes you stronger but because it increases basal metabolic rate — muscle cells even at rest burn more calories than fat cells.
3. Weight training also gets results fast — it only takes resistance training twice a week for a few weeks to begin to see a significant effect, compared with three days a week with aerobics.
4. People with greater muscle strength may be less likely to develop metabolic syndrome.
5. A Danish study just published last week showed that strength training aimed at shoulder and neck muscles can diminish the chronic neck pain that many people get from working of at computers.
Wait, there's more: Read more from Judy Foreman in the Boston Globe.

Comments

[Susan]

It's sad that it takes big name people to convince others to get on the band wagon of good health. Now if we can only work on the resuce workers who are big time over weight in most communities and see what their reasons for not working out are?????
I have asked why you don't take care of yourself when everyday you pick an obesese or heart attack victim up and carry them to the hospital yet you don't learn from it and their response is; "you have to die of something". Sad isn't it. What these jokers don't care about is WE tax payers will foot their inconsiderate attitude.
Let's hope that more people in this unhealthy world we live in will take notice of their bodies and begin to take an interest in their overall health practices.