If you’re wondering if there’s a difference between strength training and exercise, the answer is simple. All strength training is exercise, but not all exercise is strength training. It’s the same as saying all poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles. There are three other types of fitness besides strength. They include cardio, flexibility, and balance. Not all exercise is training, either. Exercise is an activity that keeps you healthy and maintains fitness. Training refers to exercising with a specific fitness goal in mind. Consider examples like training for a marathon or training to improve a certain muscle group.
Strength training differs from cardio, balance, and flexibility training.
You need all four types of exercise. Strength training can build muscles, but it can cause muscles to tighten, putting you at risk for injury from a pulled muscle. When you include flexibility training in your program, it prevents injury. While you can modify a strength-building workout to boost cardiovascular endurance, most strength-building exercises won’t improve your endurance. Balance is also important. Many strength, endurance, and flexibility exercises also improve balance, but you still need to ensure you include it in your workout.
When you train, you have specific physical goals.
If you’re playing tennis, you might want to win the match, but that doesn’t mean it’s training. Winning is not a goal to improve your body, even though it is a goal. Exercise can be hiking. You simply enjoy it. It can be dancing but if you’re trying to perfect the latest moves, it can become training. Working out to Get RIPPED is training. Some of it is strength training, while other parts focus on the other three fitness areas.
Strength training is vital for good health, regardless of your age.
Strength training improves your body composition. It burns fat and preserves or increases muscle tissue. The more muscle you have, the easier it is to lose weight. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain it than fat tissue does. That means strength training can also help with weight loss and weight management.
- Research shows that doing strength training regularly can also improve your cognitive skills, just like cardio does. It helps prevent mental decline in older individuals.
- As you age, you lose muscle tissue. When the muscles aren’t strong enough to tug on the bones, there’s no reason for the body to replace lost calcium to make them stronger, so osteoporosis develops. Strength training stops both muscle and bone loss.
- Strength training can help reduce pain and symptoms of chronic conditions like arthritis. It strengthens the muscles around the joints to prevent pressure and pain. Strength training also relieves back pain, prevents heart disease, lifts depression, and improves diabetes.
- There are several ways to do strength training. You can use bodyweight exercises, resistance bands, free weights, weight machines, and cable suspension units. Walking is a mild form of lower body strength training.
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