“Do you want your life to be easier?”
This is the question I posed to someone not too long ago as we were talking about their fitness goals.
You see, we had gotten on the topic of strength training and all the many benefits that come along with it.
For many, this link from workout to everyday life is often overlooked.
Many people link lifting weights with trying to either look better, play sports or be some sort of powerlifter. And those all can be reasons to incorporate strength training into our lives.
But what is easily overlooked are much simpler and more common reasons: we want to live better, live longer, and we want things to be easier.
Those, in a nutshell, are the overall benefits of getting stronger. And largely, these benefits are things we want even if we don’t do any sort of working out.
Something that has stuck with me recently (I wish I recalled who said this) is the best and perhaps most succinct explanation of strength in that, “Strength is our body’s currency as we age.”
That is as powerful a statement and explanation of the benefits of strength training as I ever recall hearing.
What’s even better is that you, too, can have these benefits.
Dosage
Strength training is a relatively ambiguous term. What’s the difference between lifting five or 25 or even 50 pounds? I will say, this is where a qualified fitness coach can come in and help direct you.
But you can also use Google and potentially learn a lot there too. Your overall goals will dictate what you need.
What’s most important here is that, depending on your goals, you don’t have to lift like a bodybuilder or professional athlete to achieve the benefits of strength training.
Something is better than nothing, and if you make your goal chasing strength and getting stronger over time, you will probably end up far better off than where you started.
How will this make my life easier?
No matter what your physical goals are in life, from going up and down the stairs easier to dominating the pickleball court or marathon course, having greater strength increases our ability to do work.
Whether that work is actual yard work or just moving your body more easily, being stronger helps.
And regardless of if you are 15 years old or 75 years old, strength only makes it all easier no matter if we are talking about sport performance, bone density, energy, injury prevention or speed of recovery.
Being stronger makes doing things in life easier.
Mentally strong
One often overlooked element of strength training (and maybe working out in general) is showing and proving to yourself that you can do the hard thing.
Obviously when we strength train or exercise in any way, there will be, even a little bit, more challenge than doing nothing.
And as we repeat this activity again and again, we show ourselves that we can do this and will succeed. That same feeling of competency can then be applied to other areas of life. You can endure difficult stuff and be better off for it in the long run.
Now what’s still more amazing is that the benefits of strength training go even further beyond all that I’ve mentioned so far.
And you, my friend, are very much worth pursuing these benefits.
By the way, here is an update about that same person I had talked to, asking if they wanted their life to be easier: fast-forward to now and they were talking about helping their college-aged student move and how surprised they were at how easy it was to pick up and carry all these boxes of clothing and books.
You see, they credited their workouts and the amount of strength training they do as to why they felt this move was so much easier than it ever had been before.
Strength: making life easier, one person at a time. Get yours today. Supplies are unlimited!
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