The Benefits Of Lifting Heavy Weights — But Not Too Heavy!!!
The benefits of lifting heavy weights are far and many.
For example, are you mad at your parents for the crappy genes they cursed you with, like those pencil-thin arms? That backside that’s flatter than a bombed joke?1Or, basically, Carlos Mencia’s standup career.
By placing your muscles under stress and causing them to grow in response, weight training allows you to enhance the body shape and appearance that you curse your parents for cursing you with.
But that’s not all, folks!
How about the lard that you’re carrying that has nothing to do with your poor food choices and everything to do with your inferior genetics?
Well, resistance training helps build new muscle and increase lean muscle mass. As we know, muscle is the body’s natural fat-burner. So the increased muscle mass means a boost in metabolism by as much as 15 percent, which translates to your body becoming a fat incinerating blowtorch as it burns more total calories in normal daily activity.
Yeah, looking better is why you want to weight train, whether you’re too caught up in your own bullshit or not to admit it.
Now, as much as I kid about you only having interest in this weight training shit for the shallowest of reasons, there are other benefits that extend well beyond just looking good so you can stop having to rely so much on your personality.2First of all, I’m not kidding about you only working out for vanity’s sake. Second, how you got this far with your personality alone is a wonder to me, too!
What exactly are the other benefits of lifting heavy?
My, what an astounding question!!!
ONE
As you age, muscle mass and bone density decrease, both of which women suffer more of than men. One reason why the loss of bone mass is more pronounced in women has to do with the hormonal changes in menopause. Another contributing factor to the higher osteoporosis rate is that women more often than men shy away from weight-bearing exercise. Now, because women naturally have less muscle mass than men, their not lifting heavy shit in their youth has the double effect of muscle loss hitting them the hardest.
Putting it together, muscle weakness as you age raises your chances of falling and brittle bones place you at greater risk of fracture.
Seeing how falls are among the leading cause of mortality in people older than 65, falling down as an older adult can be a death sentence.
So what’s the secret to improving balance and coordination and reducing the risk of bone fractures?
Weight training!
Weight training not only stresses the muscles and makes them grow and become stronger but also stresses the bones and results in the depositing of more bone material, helping to strengthen them.3Sure, telling you this is fucking up my investment in Joseph Enterprises, Inc, the manufacturer of “The Clapper”, but no need to worry about me living in poverty since there are plenty of future old people to make a profit off of because of their refusal to heed these words!
TWO
Metabolic syndrome refers to the possession of at least three of the five risk factors that raise your chances of such medical problems like diabetes and heart disease. These conditions include abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, low HDL cholesterol, and high triglycerides.
How does resistance training affect metabolic syndrome?
Ummmm…through the improvement of insulin sensitivity, which helps reduce the risk of diabetes.
DUH!!!
As stated earlier, resistance exercise promotes the growth of new muscle, primarily type II muscle fibers, also known as white muscle. You not figuring out how that affects blood sugar beats the hell outta me!
Ya see, slow-twitch type I muscle fibers, or red muscle, use oxygenated blood to generate energy. On the other hand, fast-twitch white muscle uses glucose to meet its power needs.4That’s because it’s metabolically expensive to maintain. As such, the more white muscle you have the lower your blood glucose levels.
Additionally, the short bursts of activity that comprise weight training rely on the use of white muscle, which triggers the release of fat-burning hormones that have the cascading effect of lowering fat mass by not only prompting the body to tap into its fat stores during the workout but well after.
Cardio doesn’t do that.5Well, except for this type of cardio?
As for the ticker, aerobic activity is often thought of as the sine qua non of heart health.6Don’t know what sine qua non means? Oooooooh, look who wasn’t in honors classes in grade school and didn’t take Latin!
It turns out that weight lifting should have a more prominent place in that equation.
Studies have found that blood flow increases more with resistance training than cardiovascular exercise, with the heightened circulation lasting for as long as 24 hours after a weight training bout in those who exercise regularly. One of the reasons has to do with the fact that blood carries nutrients, which the damaged muscles need to repair themselves after being broken down by resistance exercise.
We’re not done!
Studies also show that when compared to cardio, weight-bearing exercise decreases blood pressure by as much as 20 percent more.
Maybe it’s just me, but better blood flow and lower blood pressure sounds like yet another reason why weights shit all over cardio.
The other reason?
Ummmm…because weightlifting shits all over cardio for fat loss!7You woulda known that if you clicked this link when I told you to!!!
So if I were looking to improve both my health and my outer shell, even though it’s ALL ABOUT the outer shell, I’d spend my time lifting heavy shit.
But maybe that’s just me!
THREE
Doing physically challenging stuff has an enhancing effect on the brain’s executive functions. Basically, pushing your body to continue when the mind is Roberto Duraning it and screaming “¡No mas!” helps you to better handle high-intensity situations in life with a shit-eating grin on your face. In other words, you become comfortable being uncomfortable because you know the discomfort will eventually pay off.
The development of mental strength goes for physical activity all across the board, whether it be cycling, swimming, running, what have you.
But weight training does something that other activities can’t or don’t do to as great of a degree.
Much like we lose muscle mass and bone density as we grow older, the human brain loses white matter too. Besides the loss of anything white being a national tragedy, what’s troublesome about losing white matter is that it’s responsible for connecting the grey area parts of the brain to each other and passing information between them.8You know, information about muscle control, speech, hearing, seeing, memory, and utterly useless emotions. It’s the loss of this white matter that makes the elderly not as sharp as they once were, if the elderly person was ever anything other than a mental midget.9Oops, I meant mental “little person”!
Don’t want to suffer cognitive impairment and dementia?
Then what you should do is read a book?
Maybe solve a crossword puzzle?
How about you just STFU!!!
And after you STFU, you better pick up a fucking barbell, a heavy one at that!
See, weight training combats cognitive aging in two ways.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein whose levels in the brain increase with high-intensity exercise, with resistance training found to elevate it more than other activities. The big deal about BDNF? Oh, nothing! The fact that BDNF maintains neurons and synapses, in addition to creating new ones, certainly doesn’t make it a big deal!
Nope!
Additionally, one of the hormones produced in response to weight training is insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). Commonly cared about only for its muscle-building properties, IGF-1 too plays a role in neuroplasticity, with it stimulating new cell growth in the brain and warding off Alzheimer’s.
While weight training certainly won’t make you a genius, it’ll prevent your mental faculties from failing you and turning you into even more of an embarrassment than you already are!
FOUR
Are you a miserable fuck? Do you want to stop being such a miserable fuck? Like, do you want to someday experience that happiness crap? However, you kinda don’t want to snort coke, bang heroin, or smoke meth to experience it?
Neither do you want to quit your dead-end job and chase your dream, leave the crummy relationship you’re in for a new one, or buck up and tell your parents to get off your fucking back?10Sure, you’re in your 30s and live in your parent’s basement, but you’re a grown-ass adult, DAMMIT!!!
Maybe you’re a guy or gal who’s tired of going to massage parlors and purchasing the “Happy Ending” package to elevate your mood?
Well, I’m happy to tell you that you don’t have to do any of that shit!
Instead, just pick up a barbell.
Yes, science suggests that high-intensity anaerobic exercise — what weightlifting is — is the only form of activity that stresses the body enough to encourage the release of endorphins, hormones that ease the discomfort by making you feel on top of the world.
So feeling down in the dumps and need to do something to make life more tolerable?
Well, rather than doing something stupid like facing your problems head-on to reach a resolution, take your dumbass to the motherfucking gym!!!
Those are just some of the benefits of lifting heavy weights.
Other than the somewhat impossible task of making you look good, weightlifting with heavy weight will keep you alive longer and improve the quality of your life while you’re stuck above ground.
The thing is that you can only reap these benefits by lifting heavy, not light, loads.
But how heavy is “heavy”?
“Heavy” means as in heavy enough to present a challenge but not heavy enough to compromise your lifting form and place you at risk for serious injury, possibly leaving your body in a more fucked up condition than it’s already in.
Yeah, that heavy!
Know what else is heavy?
You only being into lifting for the superficial aspect of it. So with that in mind, use the listed benefits as lies you can tell people when they ask you what you’re working out for.
You know, so you don’t come off as the shallow piece of shit you really are!