Strength training is your key to staying fit and functional with age. The main reason people become frail as they age is they lose muscle strength and mass. What’s more, a study by researchers at Penn State College of Medicine showed that people who strength train have a lower risk of dying early. Plus, working your body against resistance improves the quality of the extra years that you live. When you strength train, you’re less prone to falls and bone loss and you have the strength to do the things you enjoy. Strength training can even improve your metabolic health too. Studies show that working muscles against resistance improves insulin sensitivity and how your body processes glucose.
To get the most benefits from strength training and lifting weights, know how to train properly and avoid some of the most common pitfalls that reduce strength gains and increase the risk of injury. Let’s look at five things you shouldn’t do if you want the most benefits from your weight-training workouts.
Don’t Hold Your Breath When Lifting
You’ve heard people say, “Don’t forget to breathe.” It’s easy to do! You’re thinking about your form and how many more pending reps you have, and you don’t even notice that you’re holding your breath. Why is breathing so important? If you hold your breath when lifting heavy weights, it increases the pressure inside your abdominal cavity. This, in turn, reduces the return of blood to your heart and this leads to a substantial rise in blood pressure. For people with hypertension or underlying heart disease, this spike in blood pressure, although transient, can be dangerous.
What’s the proper way to breathe? Breathe out as you lift the weight and inhale as you lower it. This places less stress on your heart and blood vessels. How you breathe matters, so don’t take it for granted.
Don’t Lift When You’re Distracted
If you’ve been a member of a health club, you may have noticed people who focus their attention elsewhere when they lift weights. They might spend more time watching the television screen on the wall, talking to someone as they lift, or playing with their smartphone between sets. Don’t do it! Weight training requires your undivided focus to ensure you’re using proper form, the right tempo, and doing the right number of reps. Plus, distracted lifting will increase your risk of injury. Don’t forget that focus and motivation impact your gains too. So powerful is the mind that studies show you can even make gains doing imaginary workouts! In one study, a group who did an imaginary workout three times per week enjoyed almost a 30% gain in strength–without lifting a weight. In contrast, the control group who didn’t imagine themselves working out gained no strength. It’s more than muscle power, the mind is powerful too!
Don’t Focus Too Much on How Much Weight You’re Using
On the other hand, don’t get into a rut where you’re only working with light weights and high reps. You can still build strength and muscle size using lighter weights and high reps, as long as you lift until the muscles are fatigued, but your muscles will adapt to such an approach. Higher resistance and low reps hit the fast-twitch muscle fibers early in the set and that’s optimal for building strength and power. Another advantage of using heavier weights for some of your sets is doing so also stimulates the underlying bone to lay down new tissue. That’s beneficial for preserving bone density and preventing osteoporosis.
Don’t Neglect to Write Down Your Workouts
It’s important to document your workouts, the exercises you do, the number of reps, and the number of sets. Unless you do this, you can’t see how far you’ve come and whether you’re making progress. Make sure you’re writing down your goals too. When you put them down on paper, you become more accountable.
Don’t Skimp on Recovery
Some people are too lackadaisical about their workouts, but there are other folks who jump into exercise with a fierce determination to get in shape fast! Rather than take the slow and steady approach, they push hard, train every day, and check their body fat percentage daily. Nothing wrong with having good intentions, but training with too much intensity without adequate recovery can interfere with muscle gains as muscles need time to repair and rebuild. It’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t strength train the same muscle group until those muscles have recovered for 48 hours, but your body also needs seven-plus hours of sleep each night for optimal muscle gains.
Don’t Get Too Repetitive
It’s easy to get into a strength training rut. One of the basic principles of muscle and strength gains is progressive overload, forcing your muscles to work harder in a controlled, incremental manner. That’s why it’s important to change your training variables over time, such as the resistance, the number of reps, the number of sets, the exercises you do and even the tempo of your reps. You can also avoid plateaus by using more advanced training techniques such as drop sets, forced reps, and supersets. Take a break from the dumbbells and work with a barbell or resistance bands instead. These all challenge your muscles in a different way.
The Bottom Line
Strength training has so many health and fitness benefits, but make sure you’re doing it right. Don’t make these five mistakes that can reduce your gains and increase your risk of injury. Don’t forget about good nutrition too! You can do everything right when you train, but if you aren’t consuming enough calories and protein, you may limit your gains. So, keep these training “don’ts” in mind when you work out.
References:
Science Daily. “Strength Training Helps Older Adults Live Longer”
Journal of Aging Research. Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 243958, 9 pages.
British Journal of Sports Medicine: Effect of Breathing Techniques on Blood Pressure Response to Resistance Exercise.
Front. Sports Act. Living, 09 August 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2019.00007.
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