You need a strong, healthy and capable body to carry out your plans and visions in the physical world. Your good health integrates closely with your mind and your spirit to lead you into productivity now and into the future.
A program of physical development is important and complementary to a general program of personal development. Being physically healthy helps us to be more capable and successful in achieving our full potential. There are several aspects to consider including regular exercise, good nutrition, and a healthy environment.
The traditional weight training approach many think of first when they think of working out and weight training. The ability to lift heavier weights and to have your muscles go for longer periods of time in doing so before becoming worn out benefits here.
Cardiovascular
Having a healthy heart and endurance becomes increasingly important into older age for considerations of longevity and making it into the long term. This may include running, though walking regularly at a brisk pace can have a similar effect and is easier on the joints. Not getting out of breath with more vigorous physical activity benefits here.
Flexibility
For some things our ability to have a greater range of motion and even be more agile comes in . Regular stretching can benefit this and have a large effect on our ability to perform tasks.
Most people that train physically do so with an emphasis on one main goal. Body building is to be cut up and look large, power lifting adds more actual bulk and raw power, and functional strength training provides you more what you actually will specifically need. My aim has always been a combination of the three, and I have always designed my work outs accordingly. Personally, I wanted an optimal balance of the most muscle growth, the most power, and the most ability to use it.
Bodybuilders will usually focus on what is known as hypertrophy, or stimulation of muscle growth and cut. To gain the most cut, typically you would do higher rep sets with lighter weight. This gives the appearance of larger muscle mass and is what most professional €œbody builders € would focus on. You also want to have some periods of higher weight with lower reps to throw off your muscles and prevent them from reaching a point of no growth. Your muscles get used to doing the same thing, so that's exactly what you want to avoid. Also, heavier weight with lower reps actually builds more bulk, it's just less cut, so the bulk doesn't look as large or optimal.
Power lifters will typically lift the heaviest weight with the fewest reps. At times they may go as low as one rep max, literally a one rep set. They may do as few as 3 total sets and be done. As before, doing the same thing in the same way will get your muscles too complacent and so times come when it is best to throw them off and shock them into new power and size gains. For a power lifter, this would likely come in the form of decreasing the weight to add reps. Then going back to heavier weight over time in an attempt to push past previous one rep max weight strength capabilities.
There are several considerations to weight training beyond being more powerful, bulked and muscular. To me, functional training is training yourself to be most optimally prepared in the specific manners in which you will need to use your strength.
One of the keys most people do not understand is that many people actually over train. This is so common that one of the newer predominant themes in the weight training world has transitioned from inducing anabolism (muscle mass building) to preventing catabolism (muscle break down). By doing this you are sustaining gains made. For example, even though many people's bodies are different... a good rule of thumb to me is that beyond 30-45 minutes of weight training your body often goes increasingly into a catabolic state which means anything beyond that will be counterproductive: less can produce more results. I've seen people that were already over training push themselves even harder and longer trying to get results cause they didn't understand that those they looked up to either had different genetics or were using other techniques that are undesirable. In 20-30 minutes I was getting better results then some people that were training for 2-3 hours. Work smarter not harder.
I have what's known as an ectomorphic body type, which basically means a high metabolism and not naturally muscular, and yet through my in depth study and application have been able to gain enough muscle mass in even short periods of time to where the nurse at the Dr office literally asked me at one point if I was using anabolic steroids. My techniques require a minimum of time and effort investment and achieve a maximum of results.
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