How resistance training benefits the body

The human body is made up of muscle attached to your skeleton. Its your muscles that move your joints allowing you go about your daily lives. Surrounding your muscles is a layer of fat that insulate you body and acts as a energy reserve.

Body muscle is metabolically active, this means that even at rest your muscles are burning #energy, also known as calories. However fat is not metabolically active which means that it doesn't cost the body anything to carry fat around. For this reason, the human body naturally defaults to having a certain amount of muscle, just enough to live, work and carry out our daily activities. The body tries not to have any more muscle than it needs.

If you take part in resistance training, also known as weight lifting, then you are using your muscles more vigorously that someone who leads a sedentary lifestyle. If your progressively lift more weight, your body starts adapting. It will see a need to more muscle since you are using it and need to get stronger to lift heavier and heavier weights. Also long as you are eating enough calories with sufficient protein then your body will increase in muscle mass.

Resistance training is particularity important as we age since we slowly use less and less of our muscles and due to the natural ageing process, we start losing muscle mass. However if you exercise your muscles, your body will be prompted to preserve muscle and build upon it. This prevents you from becoming frail in old age and hopefully help you live a long independent life