Weight or resistance training can tone your muscles, slow down age-related muscle loss, and improve your overall physical health. It provides ‘stress’ to your muscles, causing them to adapt and eventually become more robust, similar to aerobic conditioning that can strengthen your heart or when you replace your floors with LVT or hardwood flooring to make them stronger.
You can perform weight training using free weights, ranging from barbells, dumbbells, resistance bands to your own body weight. The most effective strategy is integrating a combination of compound exercises into your routines.
Here are some of the best weight or resistance training exercises you can try:
Squats
These can be performed by replicating your primary everyday movement, such as picking up items, getting in and out of the chair, or using the toilet. It uses and enhances all your lower body’s major muscles, particularly the hips, thighs, and lower legs. It’s a good training exercise for protecting your spine when your back or shoulder is carrying something heavy.
Lunges
These are basically a squat done on one leg. This can be done by bringing one leg forward with your foot flat on the ground and knee bent, while the other leg is at the back in a kneeling position. This is a good exercise to strengthen and enhance the size of your lower body muscles.
Deadlifts
The deadlift is resistance training, which is a combination of squats and weightlifting. This is performed by lifting weights, such as a loaded bar or barbell, from the ground up to the hips’ level and with an upright torso. This enhances both upper and lower body muscle size and strength.
Chin-ups / Pull-ups
The pull-up/chin-up is a type of closed-chain exercise for upper-body muscles’ strength and weight resistance. This is performed with the body suspended by the hands and pulling up by flexing your elbows and using your shoulder strength to bring your elbows near your torso. Every pull works out all your upper body muscles, from your wrist to your core.
Barbell Curl
A barbell curl is a pull-type weight and resistance training. This primarily enhances your biceps, shoulders, and forearm muscles. This is done by lifting weight up to your torso while standing in an upright position. You can use a barbell or loaded bar, hold the barbell using an underhand grip with your hands positioned outside your hips, and slowly pull the weight.
Push-ups
These are another example of a closed-chain exercise. This is performed by starting at a prone position, raising and lowering your body using your arms’ strength. Arms can be in various positions; they can be far or closer to each other. This exercise can significantly enhance your upper body muscles’ strength, such as triceps, shoulders, and core, when done right. So, make sure to maintain the right form throughout the exercise to get the best results.
Bench Press
The bench press is the open-chain version of push-ups. This is also an upper-body resistance training exercise. The bench press is performed by lying on a training bench and pressing or pushing a loaded bar/weight upwards. This exercise works on enhancing your triceps, shoulders, and chest muscles.
You can do this at home without an actual bench by doing a ‘floor press,’ where you have the weights on the floor, and you go under it and lift it slowly. It’s easier on your shoulders, boosting your strength while targeting your triceps better than doing an actual bench press.
Lean muscles naturally degenerate as you age, and if you don’t do anything about it, it’ll get replaced by fat. Luckily, weight or resistance training can help you reverse this trend—at any age—and the exercises mentioned are some of the best and most efficient ones to try.
