Weight Lifting Myths

Want to get – and stay – healthy?

A healthy lifestyle is more than just eating right, getting aerobic activity and logging plenty of restorative sleep.

It should also include strength training.

Strength training’s benefits reach way beyond the aesthetics: Sure, it can rev up your metabolism, reduce body fat and in turn, increase your body’s lean mass.

But strength training can also help fight many effects of aging; among them bone loss. Strength training can help prevent osteoporosis – something that becomes more important with each passing year, when your bones lose calcium and other minerals and you lose more bone than you actually form, especially after menopause.

Another advantage of lifting weights? You’re helping your body maintain its strength, and reducing your risk of injury; plus, you increase your flexibility, muscle mass and joint mobility.

Lifting weights can even give you a sharper brain: Researchers have found that it boosts cognitive functioning in older adults.

Yet although many studies have pointed to strength training’s importance as being equal to aerobic activity, so many people – especially women – are hesitant to pick up the weights.

Call it misinformation, or misplaced knowledge, but these weight-lifting myths persist:

• I’ll build big, bulky muscles. Maybe you have images of grunting men at the gym with bulging muscles. But that’s not physiologically possible, cites a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, whose researchers state that this common fear “should not dissuade women from engaging in this mode of exercise.d” What you’ll get instead of bulky muscles? A lean, tight, well-defined body. Only those who dedicate their whole lives to body building might risk developing stereotypically masculine looking bodies, but even then you could look into things like breast augmentation in Baltimore so that you can have the best of both worlds.

• I’ll get injured. Like any other form of exercise, if you overdo it or do it without proper training and form, you can get injured. But done right – that means easing into it (don’t pick up 25-pound weights when you’re just beginning!), warming up, then cooling down and stretching afterward – your body will feel just right. If you do suffer an injury, you can use the Best Rated Elbow Arm Brace for Elbow Pain Relief to ensure you don’t have permanent damage.

If you do happen to overdo it or tweak something, remember the benefits of massage to help ease sore muscles. No need to book an outside massage session; just pick up a product like this Hot/Cold Therapy Massager from Wahl for pain relief at home. You’ll get it all: heat to increase blood flow and loosen tight muscles; cold to help ease muscle tension and soreness.

• Cardio will burn more fat than weight lifting. Many people think that to lose weight, they need to ramp up their cardio, which in turn is the best way to ramp up their metabolism. But that’s just not true: Muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat, and lifting weights can increase the baseline number of your daily calorie burn.

• Since muscle weighs more than fat, I’ll gain weight. Well, maybe a little. But that weight will be lean mass, which will make you look smaller and more compact, not bigger and fatter.

• Weight lifting can cause high blood pressure. While people with uncontrolled blood pressure (higher than 180/110 mmHg) are advised against lifting weights, weight lifting, in the long term, can actually help lower your blood pressure that “outweighs the risk of a temporary spike for most people,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

Convinced that it’s time to pick up the weights? Government guidelines call for two or more days a week of muscle-strengthening activities added to your regular aerobic activity. Work all your major muscle groups, which include the legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders and arms.