Here lie the 25 REAL benefits of weightlifting. Take note and apply them to your journey.
See for yourself how these 25 beneficial factors will resonate in your life and bring forth positivity, health & wealth.
I always find solace at the gym.
1) Weight Lifting increases your strength and enhances your life
Theres no secret about it, its plain and simple:
Weight training enhances almost every aspect of your life- including the physical and mental realms.
The more consistent you are with weight lifting, the better your results will be.
You’ll undoubtedly see yourself in a different light, gaining strength and size.
The strength that you earn in the gym will translate to everyday life situations.
"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
2) Eat more and burn fat through the power of weightlifting
There are several ways to lose weight, most of which are suboptimal. Methods like cardio and food-restricting are just plain flat-out unnecessary.
The goal then? Increased metabolism. How do you increase your metabolism, you might ask?
The best way to get rid of unwanted fat hanging around is to hit the weights and eat like a king. This doesn’t mean eat everything in sight. Instead, eat intelligently- within your specific caloric parameters.
Accumulating more muscle mass allows you to burn more calories.
Increasing your metabolism means you’ll burn more calories, which is stored energy in fat.
Build more muscle, lose fat. Isn’t that what you want?
You're wasting time bouncing around the treadmill for hours. Learn the fundamental guidelines on how to truly build a solid physique and stay consistent. Simple.
Train heavy within your means, lift with passion and purpose with your newly acquired desire and exercise knowledge.
Aim to beat your previous exercises on a weekly basis.
Fall in love with the process and be amazed by the results.
3) Hitting the weights makes you smarter
Why should you weight lift? Lifting weights has been scientifically proven to enhance your memory and cognitive process.
“One of the most profound effects on resistance training is the marked improvement in memory and memory-related tasks” 1
You’ll notice that as you continue on your journey of weight lifting and self improvement, you become sharper.
Thoughts and memories come with ease, even your speech will improve. A new world begins to emerge.
4) You lift the weight you Lift your mood
Weight training can be known to combat depression. It will kick depression in the ass while you set out to conquer your newly found goals.
Most people walk through life in a walking daze. Zombies. Going from point A to point B, C, and back to point A... repeating the process day in and day out.
For others, life’s challenges and the inability to cope or thrive past such challenges trigger a sense of hopelessness.
Lifting weights allows you to triumph. It creates an upward spiral of good-feeling chemicals in the brain, otherwise known as endorphins.
Endorphins are good, it kick-starts testosterone building. More testosterone equals more winning and vise - versa.
Not only do you feel great when you kick ass in the gym, but biologically, the release of your stress hormones are reduced.
This is a win-win.
Not only do you reduce the flow of stress hormones in your blood stream, you also add an extra layer of immunity since having lower stress levels are directly linked to a less of a chance of illness.
Plainly said, having high stress levels opens the door to all kinds of illnesses and diseases. Lift weights to counteract stress and illnesses.
5) the gym is the university for hard work & discipline- learn
The hardest part of taking any endeavor up and succeeding is always the beginning.
This is where most will usually throw in the towel, coming up with a thousand and one excuses as to why they stopped.
But you’re different. You’ll succeed.
You want it more than the next guy, and you want to prove to yourself that you have the guts and determination to go the extra mile.
You'll slowly see yourself transforming into a harder working individual. Discipline appears from the peripherals as you make weight lifting a priority, basking in the results of hard work and sweat.
You set out to achieve. Your vision is slowly manifesting itself through your actions.
You create a physique you would have never dreamed of, all through discipline, hard work and a vision.
6) Weight Lifting helps you become goal oriented
Reach for the sky...
Weight lifting helps you accomplish goals.
Small goals first, like getting your ass up out of bed and into the gym.
From that action, your goals will manifest into bigger goals like beating your previous record in your exercise routine.
Then come the goals of absolutely conquering it all that pertain to your life's endeavors.
There is nothing better than the feeling you get of raw triumph, of conquering a workout and the level of calmness and equanimity that proceeds your victories.
Weight lifting will give you tools to set out goals methodically.
Each exercise and each week you’ll have an objective, a goal.
Crossing out each goal with a line through will send you straight to an upward spiral of victory and winning.
It’s scientifically proven that the more you win, the more likely you will continue to win. The chemical process that takes place in the brain primes you for victory. From this neurophysiological change, your scope of vision is now focussed on success.
Success…
7) Head up, shoulders back. Gain confidence with weightlifting
What can weight lifting do for your self esteem and confidence? Look around you, whether it may be at your office, in school, or with a bunch of friends. How many of those people do you see with poor posture, or not enough pep in their step?
In our day and age, its considered normal to have our backs in a slump, heads facing down while we look at our phones or typing away at the desk.
This does not sub-communicate confidence.
Walk with pride, not arrogantly, but with confidence, poise, and purpose.
Walk and live as if you were royalty, not arrogance, but with the utmost confidence. Start hitting the weights and you’ll see this unfold before your eyes and the eyes of the people around you.
8) WeightLifting brings on euphoria
Weightlifting is good for the soul.
This goes in tandem with #6, the more you win and conquer, the more satisfying it all gets.
It becomes absolutely addicting, and you’ll be itching and waiting for the next weight training session to start.
It’s scientifically proven that lifting weights engages your mind in a neurological process where dopamine is released. Dopamine is what make you feel good. 2
Dopamine release leads to the feeling of euphoria. Thats right. When I lift, I feel euphoric. I'm in paradise.
Feel euphoric while winning, conquering your goals.
There is no greater feeling than this! As Arnold said in Pumping Iron, "its the best feeling in the world."
9) super health and immunity from the iron
Probably the coolest effect from weightlifting is the positive impact it has on your health. Many folks out there are in search for the fountain of youth.
Little did they all know that the fountain of youth was indeed the cold-hard iron.
That's right, in participating in regular exercise (in comparison to their more sedentary, non-exercising peers) the positive effects can range anywhere from:
Decreasing your chances of heart disease
Keeping your bones strong
Raising your body's temperature which prevents bacteria from growing
Flushing out bacteria from your lung's airways. 4
10) Lifting can prevent you from a stroke
According to the researchers at the University of Michigan, they found that doing 3 body-weight exercises a week for two months reduced the subject's blood pressure by an average of 8 points. 5
What does this mean?
It means that by reducing your blood pressure, you're reducing the risk of having a stroke by 40%.
No strokes plus making gains and looking damn good? That's a win-win.
11) The effects of weightlifting can lower risk of heart disease
The British Journal of Sports Medicine found that:
Exercise training has direct benefits on the cardiovascular system and can also work indirectly, by reducing risk factors for CHD (Coronary Heart Disease). 7
Your heart will thank you, and so will your muscles when you pump fresh oxygenated blood to them.
The prevailing view in these reports is that more active or fit individuals tend to develop less coronary heart disease (CHD) than their sedentary counterparts. 8
Other benefits of weightlifting on hearth health:
Increase in exercise tolerance
Reduction in body weight
Reduction in blood pressure
Reduction in bad (LDL and total) cholesterol
Increase in good (HDL) cholesterol
Increase in insulin sensitivity
12) You'll live longer if you weightlift and exercise regularly
Talk about fountain of youth...
People who exercise vs people who don't exercise.
Healthy adults who are the least fit have a mortality risk that is 4.5 times that of the most fit. Surprisingly, an individual’s fitness level was a more important predictor of death than established risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. This study, along with others, underscores the fact that fitness and daily activity levels have a strong influence on the incidence of heart disease and overall mortality. 10
13) You will sleep like a baby if you lift
Lift like a beast, sleep like a baby. Your body does all the recovery at night when you sleep. You will have taxed your Central Nervous System (CNS) with all those gains you've been making. Fatigue is only natural.
Tired of counting sheep? Count the reps on squats and see how well you sleep that night.
Sleepfoundation.org is proud to promote exercise on it's list of "Top Ten Healthy Tips for Better Sleep".
Another added benefit of this newly-found fatigue?
NO MORE SLEEPING PILLS.
Exercise offers a potentially attractive alternative or adjuvant treatment for insomnia. Sleeping pills have a number of adverse side effects and are not recommended for long-term use, partly on the basis of a significant epidemiologic association of chronic hypnotic use with mortality. 11
14) Manage type 2 Diabetes with weightlifting
According to the American Diabetes Association:
Exercise has consistently been shown to improve glucose control (1–3), enhance insulin sensitivity (2,4,5), and improve cardiovascular risk factors such as visceral adiposity (2), lipid profile (6), arterial stiffness (7), and endothelial function (8).
Thats 6 benefits for people with Type 2 Diabetes! 11
Consistent with this evidence, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends that individuals with type 2 diabetes perform at least 150 min of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and/or at least 90 min of vigorous aerobic exercise per week (9).
15) Weight lifting increases bone mineral density
Unfortunately, our bones don't get stronger as we age. The opportunity for bone growth and adding density happens when we're young and active.
Why?
When we're young we tend to have more energy to expend on physical activities.
This means that we cause more physical impact to our bones. Each step and rep you take is an opportunity for your bones to absorb such impact and adapt. The more impact, the stronger your bones will be from all of that adaptation...ideally.
According to a study,
Resistance training is a mode of exercise that can be used to build peak bone mass during youth, thereby preventing osteoporosis later in life....Men had significantly greater increases in BMD at the lateral spine and femoral neck. Male exercisers were found to increase BMD by 2.7-7.7%, whereas percent change in women ranged from -0.8 to 1.5%, depending on the bone site. Both male and female controls demonstrated about 1% change at any bone site. Results indicate that 24 weeks of resistance training, including squat and deadlift exercises, is effective in increasing BMD in young healthy men. 6
Is it ever too late?
The answer is no.
To determine the effects of strength training (ST) on bone mineral density (BMD) and bone remodeling, 18 previously inactive untrained males [mean age 59 +/- 2 (SE) yr] were studied before and after 16 wk of either ST (n = 11) or no exercise...BMD increased in the femoral neck by 3.8 +/- 1.0% (0.900 +/- 0.05 vs. 0.933 +/- 0.05 g/cm2, P < 0.05) and in the lumbar spine. 7
Just get to lifting. Your bones will thank you along the way.
16) You'll eat more of the food you love
Closely tying into benefit #2, exercising regularly will require your body to consume more fuel. Plain and simply, as you exercise more, so will you require more fuel to aid in recovery.
Fuel is food and food is fuel. You'll be expending more calories, so your body will be looking for ways to repair itself...boosting metabolic capacity.
This means you'll be able to eat more food, more of what you love. More peanutbutter? No problem. More pizza? No worries. Just remember to stay within your nutrient parameters given your goals and lifestyle.
Its important to remember that this principle may vary depending on where you're at in your journey. If you take my approach on dieting, you'll understand that I don't stick to a strict meal or diet plan. I eat like a king and make kingly gains without the rigidity of a 'diet plan'.
For example, if i'm 2-3 months away from a bodybuilding competition, i'd like to leave no variable to chance. In the event of an upcoming bodybuilding show, I will tend to stick to a handful of foods and portions so that I have those variables nailed down, leaving nothing to chance or guess work.
When competition season is near, everything is closely dialed in.
Remember, I STILL ate foods I loved when I was in contest-prep-mode. Peanutbutter, home-made pizza, chocolate syrup AND peanutbutter in my protein oats, etc.
17) burn more calories + develop muscle. we all know but...
This goes hand-in-hand with the principle above and #2. When you weight lift, you're stimulating your muscles and allowing them to develop and grow. This means that they'll adapt and eventually grow.
Simultaneously, you'll be burning calories.
What you're doing is building a physique while burning calories.
You cant build a physique on a TREADMILL.
You've got to sculpt and develop what's there underneath, your muscles. No amount of treadmill work will ever stimulate your muscles like weight lifting will.
Hit those weights!
18) Looking damn good in the mirror comes from lifting
There aren't really any studies on this, just see for yourself after grinding and lifting for a while.
Let your own body be the case and study.
See for yourself the satisfaction you get from making art, adding something that was never there before.
You'll be building your temple, the masterpiece, the stone slab, its the only one you've got!
19) If you lift, you'll be in an upward spiral of positivity
Good vibes everywhere.
You'll be in an upward spiral of positivity from weight lifting.
But how? Likes attract likes, birds of a feather flock...together.
Because you're going out of your way to improve yourself, you'll begin to develop positive habits, a positive mindset about yourself, your hard work, and your new-found gains.
You'll begin to attract people who vibe with you on this new set of beliefs.
You'll notice your physical appearance is greatly enhanced, which validates your new found beliefs. You become more attractive and attract those which you set your sights on.
It's important to remember to never base your self-esteem and confidence based purely on external factors, like your physical appearance.
In doing so, you'll be greatly disappointed. Why? Because looks may come and go. It's important to transmute your confidence and new set of beliefs inward, toward an unshakable center, instead on factors that can change on a whim.
Be centered and you'll forever have that confidence.
20) You'll boost your testosterone levels from weightlifting
According to a study published in Sports Medicine;
Testosterone is important for the desired adaptations to resistance exercise and training; in fact, testosterone is considered the major promoter of muscle growth and subsequent increase in muscle strength in response to resistance training in men. The acute endocrine response to a bout of heavy resistance exercise generally includes increased secretion of various catabolic (breakdown-related) and anabolic (growth-related) hormones including testosterone. 12
What are the benefits of testosterone? Testosterone can:
Fight depression
Decreases body fat by regulating insulin, glucose, and fat metabolism
Increases muscle mass
Strengthens your heart
Increases libido
Enhance your cognitive ability
Lift, baby. LIFT
21) its good for your joints
Contrary to what some people may think, weight lifting is actually good for your joints. Especially if most of your day consists of being sedentary. Sitting all day is not natural, and is not part of our evolutionary purposes.
We are designed to move, to hunt, climb and run...not sit for 8-10 hours a day.
Multi-joint movements are the best for your joints. They target most of your joints, and stimulates a larger target of muscle groups.
Squatting is not bad for your knees. Not exercising and sitting all day is bad for your knees. Squatting with ugly form is also bad for your knees. Just a heads-up.
22) You'll prevent yourself from injuries with weight lifting
Lifting with ugly form is a quick way to get yourself injured, especially if you're inexperienced. However, strengthening your back, shoulders, and legs will enable you to excel in your weight lifting journey.
Lifting with proper form will only enhance your ability to handle more weight, and prevent you from unwanted injuries.
Injury prevention comes down to checking your gut and ego. Be sure that you're really able and ready to execute a heavy lift, or even know when to step back from extreme over-use and overtraining.
23) Your Stamina will be increased. Cardio-bunny? Nah
As you exercise more often and hit those weights, your stamina will adjust accordingly. Your heart and overall capacity to endure exercise will rise.
What can you do with improved stamina?
Climbing up the stairs won't be a mission and a half that comes with huffing and puffing.
You'll have an abundance of energy. You'll be able to tolerate higher levels of intense workouts, exercises, playing sports.
The quality of your life will improve in so many ways.
You may even be dipping into psychological stamina. You will have set the bar in your mind on things you were once able to achieve. Now that you're making continuous progress, you set the bar higher on the things your willing endure, push through, and solve on a psychological level.
You'll be able to handle higher levels of intensity, and you'll rock at other forms of cardio your little heart desires.
24) Weightlifting gives you a new sense of purpose
I truly believe that part of realizing your ultimate purpose in life is realizing how far you can take yourself in life, your mind, body and spirit.
If done correctly, weightlifting will touch all realms of your existence...mind, body, and spirit.
Nothing beats this sense of accomplishment, knowing that you're walking into the realm of self realization, of maximizing every ounce of life, taking yourself to new heights.
What's your purpose in life?
25) Weight Lifting teaches you tools you’ll never forget
Weight lifting has shaped me in so many ways. I've undergone a physical and mental metamorphosis.
I attribute goal-setting, hard work, determination, confidence and discipline, to name a few, to bodybuilding and weight lifting in general.
This happens to be my avenue in which I absolutely thrive in. An avenue in which I realized my ultimate potential and true gift. I'm able to reach, inspire and teach many others with this set of skills.
If you train with purpose and heart, consistently, you will with no doubt walk away with a handful of the positive attributes I just listed above.
For really understanding bodybuilding and creating the physique you'e always dreamed of, I highly suggest buying Arnold's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding, or just keep reading in the realm.
You’ll cary these attributes in your arsenal for the rest of your life, and apply them to all things on your journey.
Push yourself.
Actually push yourself. Push past your plateaus, your barriers, excuses and comforts.
Now you understand the benefits and reasons of weightlifting. Can you think of more? Let me know if you do, i'll hear you out on how weightlifting has uplifted you.
This is fun, its exhilarating and euphoric. It will shape you in many ways you will have never imagined. Lets get to it. Lets lift.
Anything is possible. Train hard, stay great.
Dean