What is Variety in Training?
Strength, Endurance, and Mobility. Those are the three tenets we strive to help our readers improve. When we get down to it, we can break training down much further than that, but it really isn’t necessary to get our point across. When we recommend adding some variety to your training, we mean incorporating elements from one of the tenets that you usually ignore. If you strength train religiously, add in some walking or moderate cardio. If you run every day, trade out a couple runs for 20 minutes of stretching. If you’re an avid yogi, find some time to lift weights.
You don’t have to go all-in on a specific area of fitness in order to see the benefits from it, just give it a try. We are here to explain to you the impact of switching it up once-in-a-while, and give you some advice on how to do it effectively. Read on to find out how and why you should include strength, endurance, and mobility training in your routine.
Adding in Strength Training
In our context, strength training is any kind of training you perform with the goal of improving muscular strength, power, or size. The obvious example is lifting weights, but strength training also includes calisthenics, sprinting, hybrid exercises that also train endurance or mobility such as cycling or pilates, and more. There are profound health and aesthetic benefits to strength training and, trust us, incorporating a few sessions a week will not make you look like an over-muscled bodybuilder.
Benefits of Strength Training
Strength training has a wide range of health benefits, but to keep it simple, we will focus on longevity. How long you live is a pretty good indicator of how generally healthy you are. At the risk of boring you with scientific studies, let’s get into just how impactful strength training can be on longevity. A meta-analysis of studies published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that across 16 studies, 30-60 minutes of strength-building activities per week lowered all-cause mortality rates by 10-20%. For subjects with diabetes, further improvements were noted from subjects near the higher end of that range (1 hour per week).
Furthermore, a peer-reviewed research study by Wang and colleagues noted that in elderly hypertensive patients, low grip strength was positively correlated with all-cause mortality. Grip strength is commonly used as an easily measurable (by grip strength dynamometer) indicator of functional strength. This study further supports the idea that strength training has a beneficial effect on longevity, even for older adults with chronic health conditions. Long story short, stronger people live longer.
Beyond the science, strength training can have profound effects on mental and emotional well-being. In order to improve your strength, you will build muscle. Building muscle, in turn, helps you look and feel good. We understand not wanting to look like a professional bodybuilder, but lifting weights twice per week is not going to lead to that outcome. Instead, it is likely that you will shape your body into a more natural, healthy form. Aside from just feeling better in your skin, lifting weights naturally promotes healthy, youthful levels of hormones and reduces stress. You might be surprised, working out once a week might be all you need to feel better on a daily basis!
Finally, if you’re already into endurance or mobility training, strength training can help you perform in the events you love most. Have you ever been on a long run and find your quads pounding after a downhill segment? What about that yoga pose that you just can’t seem to find balance in? We aren’t saying you should ditch your current training regime and go all-in on strength training, just that you might benefit from trading out 1 or 2 sessions a week with some time in the gym. Strengthening your muscles can improve balance, stability, joint health, and overall performance.
How to Add in Strength Training
The prospect of strength training can be daunting, especially for inexperienced, aging, or unhealthy adults. If you’re healthy and able, feel free to skip this step, but the first step is to consult with your doctor. Especially if you’re at higher risk for exercise-related injury, getting cleared by a medical professional will ensure that you are taking the safest route possible on your journey to improving your strength.
Once you are cleared and ready to start, the most effective way to maximize your benefits is to work with a personal trainer. A certified personal trainer is a fitness professional with the skills and expertise to continually assess your level of fitness and provide you with guidance and programming to help you achieve your desired results. Depending on your specific needs, you can seek out a trainer with additional certifications or experience with your conditions and goals.
For those without the means to hire an in-person personal trainer, there are still some great options available. Today, there are more online resources than ever before, improving your access to virtual coaching, programming, and free guides. Online coaches are often cheaper and more accessible than in-person, but coming at the cost of some reduced ability to accurately assess your performance. For more experienced or do-it-yourself readers, you can purchase workout plans specifically designed for your goals, or even find free guides online (YouTube is a great resource).
Whether you’re selecting a personal trainer or picking a workout plan, try to find options that promote increasing strength. Avoid falling into the trap of programs that claim to “Blast body fat!” or “Tone your abs.” While fads or marketing schemes may produce immediate-term results, simpler programs for improving strength over time will often yield much better long-term results. Remember, we are strength training to improve overall health and performance, not to get ripped as possible before Summer.
Tips and Tricks
- Be weary of overtraining: One of the biggest risks of adding a new modality to your training is routine is trying to do to much. If you’re waking up sore every day, not making strength gains, your joints are hurting, or you aren’t enjoying it anymore, then you might be overtraining. To reduce the risk of overtraining, try substituting instead of adding. If you run 5 times a week now, adding in strength training can look like running 3 times a week and lifting twice.
- It only takes a little: While you may see programs advertising 5 or more workouts per week in the gym, it really doesn’t take that much to see vast improvements in strength. You can see gains from as little as one workout every other week, and we recommend that beginners start with just 1-2 workouts per week.
- Fuel your body: When you start strength training, your body will start burning more calories. Both the increased movement itself and the effects of increased muscle on your metabolism will require you to eat more every day. We recommend you eat more whole natural foods and up your daily protein intake when you start strength training.
- Have fun: This is our biggest key to success with any addition to your training. Fitness doesn’t have to be a chore, it can be a fun part of your everyday life. If you don’t like something, find a substitute that you do like. Try using fitness as a way to spend time with the people you love. All-in-all, adding strength training into your routine can be a fun and rewarding way to add some variety into your life.
References
- Momma, H., Kawakami, R., Honda, T., & Sawada, S. S. (2022). Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. British journal of sports medicine, 56(13), 755–763. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2021-105061
- Wang, Y., Meng, T., Yang, W., Yan, M., Su, X., Wang, X., Chen, L. , Ren, Y. (2023). Association of grip strength and comorbidities with all-cause mortality in the older hypertensive adults. Frontiers in Public Health, 11, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1162425