Toning your muscles helps you look better in clothes, but resistance training to build strength has a host of associated health benefits, too. Building muscle builds bone mass, too, an effect that combats the bone mineral-density loss of osteoporosis. A strong muscular foundation helps prevent physical injuries from overtaxing your body. Because muscle is more metabolically active than fat, muscle helps keep you lean --- and a leaner body suffers less stress to joints.
Bone Density
You might see your skeleton as just a framework on which living tissue grows, but the skeleton is as alive as your organs and muscles. Any physical movement you make relies on muscles moving your skeleton. As your muscles pull your bones to take a step or reach for a glass of water, the muscles' attachment points to those bones feel stress. During resistance training, that stress encourages bone development. Weight-bearing exercises that build bone include lifting weights, but the term also refers to exercises that support your own weight such as walking, jogging and holding certain yoga poses.
Injury Prevention
Strong muscles support more weight and tolerate greater force applied to them. When you lift something that is too heavy for you, your body moves to offset that weight. In the case of a weight too great for your strength, those movements could cause injury. Heavy weights require more effort to manipulate them, and if your muscles can't produce sufficient force, your body will compensate in ways that could cause you injury. Moving something heavy also incurs a risk of dropping the item if your strength isn't up to the task, possibly injuring you in the process.
Support System
Your skeleton supports your muscles, but your muscles also exert force to hold your skeleton in place. Building up the muscles that support your torso also help stabilize your lower back and pelvis. A 2006 article in the medical journal "Spine" concluded that the deep transversus abdominis muscle -- the one you activate during crunches -- "most likely improves the stabilization of the lumbopelvic region." Sheets of muscle surrounding your kneecaps, meanwhile, lend your legs stability as you walk and run.
Metabolic Inefficiency
It may sound strange to refer to inefficient metabolism as a good thing, but when it comes to preventing fat gain, the inefficiency of muscle compared to fat helps you lose weight. It costs your body more to maintain muscle mass than to maintain fat mass, so strengthening muscles will help you burn more fat even while you're at rest. Removing excess weight from your joints, particularly your knees, ankles and hips, can ease certain types of joint pain. Excess weight is also associated with plantar fasciitis, a painful inflammation of the bands of connective tissue that connect your heel to the balls of your feet.
References
- University of Arizona: Bone Builders
- University of New Mexico; Aerobics Vs. Resistance Training; Len Kravitz, Ph.D.
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases: Exercise for Your Bone Health
- MayoClinic.com; Plantar Fasciitis: Risk Factors; March 15, 2011
- "Spine"; An MRI Investigation into the Function of the Transversus Abdominis Muscle During "Drawing-In" of the Abdominal Wall; J. Hides, et al.; March 15, 2006
Member Comments