The importance of resistance training (for everyone!)

By Elliot Brandon Physiotherapist On Your Game Physiotherapy 

Muscle loss:

 

Research has shown that as we age, if not partaking in regular resistance exercise, muscle mass can decrease at approximately 3-8% per decade after the age of 30, with higher rates of decline after the age of 60. This shows the importance of regular resistance training, to slow down the process of muscle loss, but also to improve performance in sport. Muscles are not just for show, they contract to produce all of our movement, store nutrients, stabilise joints, sustain our posture and perform all our daily activities that we do without even thinking. Resistance training allows us to reduce muscle loss and perform to the best of our abilities with all ventures in life. 

 

Volpi, E., Nazemi, R. and Fujita, S. (2004) Muscle tissue changes with aging, Current opinion in clinical nutrition and metabolic care. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804956/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20striking,60%20%5B4%2C5%5D. 

 

Decreased bone density: 

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Strength training, alongside a high protein diet, can increase our bone

density. This creates more robust bones and can reduce the risk of fractures.

As we age, our bones also naturally have a reduction in bone density, but

regular strength training can reduce this loss. Long periods of rest and

inactivity leaves us with a higher risk of our bones becoming less dense,

and our muscles becoming weaker, causing an overall reduction in the

functions of our normal daily lives. 

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Reducing risk of diabetes and obesity:

 

Resistance training also has many other benefits, particularly for the body's metabolism and ability to control insulin and blood glucose levels, for those with poor metabolic health. As our muscles use glucose for energy, resistance training has been shown in numerous studies to improve glucose and insulin homeostasis and is recommended to resist against type 2 diabetes. Alongside this, regular resistance training has consistently shown to significantly increase lean muscle weight, and metabolic rate, whilst significantly decreasing body fat weight. This can also help to manage obesity, which is a risk factor for diabetes or pre-diabetes. Regular exercise also burns calories, further supporting weight loss and the management of obesity.

 

Westcott, Wayne L. PhD. Resistance Training is Medicine: Effects of Strength Training on Health. Current Sports Medicine Reports 11(4):p 209-216, July/August 2012. | DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8

 

 

Cardiovascular improvements:

 

During exercise, our body responds by increasing physiological markers. This includes elevating our heart rate and blood pressure. Consistently elevating these markers through exercise and resistance training causes our cardiovascular system to become more efficient. Studies have shown that resistance training reduces resting blood pressure, improves blood lipid profiles (fat-like substances within our blood), and enhances vascular condition. All of these benefits can lead to a decreased risk of heart disease and vascular related conditions.

 

Westcott, Wayne L. PhD. Resistance Training is Medicine: Effects of Strength Training on Health. Current Sports Medicine Reports 11(4):p 209-216, July/August 2012. | DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8

 

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Improved performance and reduction in injury risk: 

 

Resistance training can lead to increased performance in your sport, regardless of if you play for fun or compete at a high level. Tailored training plans are crucial for athletes, to allow for specificity in the area of their game they want to improve. For example, resistance training can improve power, speed, agility, balance and much more. Further to this, tailored resistance training programmes can reduce the risk of injury as our muscles, connective tissues and bones become more robust, and can better tolerate the forces placed on the body during sport. 

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Improved mental health:

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As we perform resistance training, and through exercise, endorphins (feel good hormones) are pumped around our body through the blood. This leaves us feeling in a better mood, with a higher self-esteem and overall an increase in energy levels. Starting a consistent routine gives you time in the day to focus on yourself, and improve all areas of your life. Multiple studies have found improvements in depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, sleep and cognition. 

 

O’Connor, P.J., Herring, M.P., & Caravalho, A. 2010. Mental health benefits of strength training in adults. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 4 (5), 377–96.

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How to prevent injuries and stay On Your Game
 

‘Prevention is better than cure’ a saying my Mother must have told me a thousand times, but it’s true. It is much better to prevent an injury than to have one. Often it is just a case of incorporating a few daily habits into our routine.

So here we go, here are a few of my top tips for preventing injuries…
 

Warm ups

Help provide blood and oxygen to our muscles, this increases the force we can put through them before an injury occurs.

Synovial fluid increases to the joints, this helps to lubricate the joints and prevent cartilage injuries.
 

Proprioceptive feedback is improved via warm ups. What is proprioception you ask? Well it is knowledge of where your joint is in relation to space and the other joints in your body, without this we are increasing our risk of predominantly ligament and cartilage injuries. Warming up can help improve this feedback loop between the joints and the brain  

 

Progressive overload

Progressive overload is when we slowly build up what we are doing

overtime e.g. increasing our running distance gradually, adding more

weight to the bar each week.

Too heavy too soon will likely lead to muscle related injuries such as tears.

Increasing the load too quickly when looking at more repetitive tasks such

as running can cause a tendon based injury, the body has to adapt to the

load that you’re putting on it.

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Strength & Conditioning

Often we go to the gym and play a sport or run etc. and we don’t link the two activities. Putting injury prevention work into your gym training will help keep you on your game in your sport. You could include landing mechanics, joint stability work, power and strength work.

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Recovery

Recovery covers a whole host of things but here we will take a look at rest days, deload weeks and overall monitoring.

Rest days are a great way to help focus your recovery, you don’t have to sit on the sofa all day, you could go for a brisk walk or a gentle cycle if you wanted to. Having days where you reduce the stress on your central nervous system (yes that gets fatigued too) and your muscles can help you become stronger in the long run as without adequate recovery growth won’t happen, but injuries could!
 

Deload weeks are a great way to keep your body on ‘tick over’ you’re still going to the gym but you’re reducing the weights you were lifting by around 50-60%, this results in your body having a chance to recover without staying sedentary for a whole week. When I have particularly stressful periods in my life I incorporate these every 4 weeks, other times when sleep, nutrition and general stress is lowered I may extend this to 6 weeks.
 

Monitoring your load when running or lifting is really important when helping to prevent injuries. From my experience of working in professional rugby clubs I have learnt A LOT. If a player came in with a muscle injury, a calf for example, which we would deem ‘preventable’ we would look back at their GPS data from the last week or so and see how far they’ve run in that time, how many times they have hit their top speed amongst other things. From this we can see have they had an increase in their load which has caused this? Now, in clubs we aim to be more proactive instead of reactive and we monitor their load better by pulling players from sessions early if they have run above a certain number of kilometres or hit their top speed ‘x’ number of times, as a preventative measure. Now with the help of our mobile phones and apps like Strava amateur athletes are able to monitor this better for themselves. Are you feeling more fatigued? Have you checked your mileage? Have you clocked up a few more than usual? Perhaps it is time for a deload.

 

Sleep

Human Growth Hormone is released at night, which helps us recover, grow and repair. Studies on college American footballers and on children have shown that not just sports related injury but general accidental injury is increased when our sleep is poor. This can be due to daytime sleepiness as well as having a reduction in meaningful recovery.

 

Nutrition

Not having enough protein/carbs post workout means that our body is unable to repair the exercise induced muscle damage that occurs as a result. Causing longer recovery times and increasing the risk of injury per a training session if muscles have not adequately adapted to training. Furthermore, there are early signs of vegan diets being more problematic for tendon injuries due to lack of collagen within these diets, more research needs to be done in this area though.

 

I could go on and on about injury prevention, but here are just a few strands for you to focus on over the coming weeks.

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