Weight Lifting and Stress Management

Stress. We all deal with it day to day. Most mental health and other healthcare professionals agree that one of the best ways to deal with and overcome stress is to raise the endorphin level in the brain and stimulate the “pleasure centers through rigorous exercise. The so-called “natural high”. And there is none better that I can think of than the one you get after pumping up from weightlifting. The very term “pumping up” and feeling pumped after weightlifting refers as much to your state of mind, as the state of your muscles.

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Weight Lifting as Physical Therapy

Do your know were many peoples first introduction to weightlifting is? It is not in a gym, it is in a Physical Therapy room. In fact if I walked you in blindfolded to either a modern gym, or modern PT department of most major hospitals or orthopedic centers, I bet you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Weightlifting is almost always part of the physical therapy to recuperate from an injury or slow the effect of joint disease such as arthritis.

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Cross Training and Weightlifting

Weightlifting in and of itself is a great sport. But no matter what sport you are into, or whatever you may be training for, there is not a game on the planet that weightlifting cannot improve. We all know how weightlifting can improve general health and fitness, the body benefits in so many ways be increasing strength and muscle mass. But because of the very nature of weightlifting, and the ability to target specific muscle groups with specific exercises, you can cross train by weightlifting to strengthen arms, legs or any other part of the body to perk up your game.

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How does Weightlifting Increase Muscle Size?

We all know that lifting weights leads to bigger muscles, harder muscles, and more definition. But just how does weight lifting do that? What is the physiology of weight lifting?

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Competitive Weight Lifting

Weightlifting is a great way to get fit. Weightlifting builds muscle. Muscle makes you stronger, burns fat and raises your metabolism. Pound for Pound weightlifting is probably one of the best kinds of exercise you can do for your body. But weightlifting isn’t just  a hobby or a way to get in shape. It is a competitive sport. And a very exciting one at that.

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Weight Lifting and Genetics - is strength and muscle mass determined by DNA?

Nature or Nurture. It has been a debate that comes into play in just about ever aspect of human behavior or ability. How strong, how smart, how fast we are, or can be -are we a product of our environment or genes? Or both? Weightlifters, body builders and fitness pros, are no strangers to this debate.

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Weightlifting and Definition

“Definition” ironically is one of the most improperly defined words in weightlifting and fitness. It is the most misunderstood and misused term out there. I have even seen professional fitness and weightlifting magazines throw around the terms “Tone” and “Definition” indiscriminately and more often then not incorrectly.

When most people use the term “tone” or “definition” they are using it in opposition to the term “bulk”. They think bodybuilders are “bulky” the body of a gymnast “toned” and “defined.” Poppycock! Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact it is the body builder whose ultimate goal is true “definition”. Definition in its purest sense is being able to see clearly “defined” and separated muscle groups. This is exactly what a bodybuilder strives for and competes with.

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Weightlifting for Bulk

When people think of weightlifting and building muscle they usually are thinking of two things, “Bulk” and “definition”. People will throw around words like  I am interested in “building muscle” or and this is especially true of woman, say I don’t want to get bulky I just want “to get toned”.  Further the think bodybuilding is going for “definition and or tone” and weightlifting for “Muscle or Bulk”. Well a lot of these terms get misused, even in professional lifting and body building magazines. The truth is that weightlifting, any kind of weight lifting will do both - grow your muscles and tone you muscles. When they talk about definition, or what most people refer to as “Muscle Tone” they really are talking about the muscles you can see, like the six pack abs or bulging pecks. Well in that case Body builders are the ones that are most concerned with showing off their physique as they weightlift for a visual competition - and they know that the way to get “sculpted” and show those muscles has much less to do with how you weightlift as it is with reducing body fat percentage, no muscles, no matter how “toned” will show under a layer of fat.

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Weight Lifting for Woman

For many years it was believed that weightlifting was only an activity to be done by men. And even then only by a special breed of males, who wanted to become superhuman examples of human perfection. Even as over the past few decades it has come to be generally accepted that weightlifting is something that has benefits for men other then the muscle beach crowd, still it has generally been looked upon as a male activity. Women fear weightlifting. They think it will make them look too big, or “like men” They think weightlifting is only for the most athletic of women. Not true. Indeed there is a sport of female bodybuilding - but these women will be the first to tell you that they need to work extremely hard, probably twice or three times as hard, to gain that kind of physique as their male counter parts. Why? A simple biological fact - women do not make enough testosterone to build muscle as big or as quickly as men do.

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