Hi, everybody. Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness Personal Training Studio, where your health comes first. Today I’m asking the question: can being strong make your life better? If you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188.
Well, I think we all remember back in the day whenever cardio was all the rage. You went in, you did 30, 45, or maybe even an hour of cardio each day. But as you may be aware, the strength movement has kind of exploded over the last decade, and taken that idea to the curb. You’ve still got your die hard cardio fans, but for the most part, a lot of people are really pushing the strength side.
So does it make a difference? Well, I talk with clients about how cardio exercise can be really great for your heart, but not always so great for changing your body, and since that seems to be the place that most people are at cardio is probably not the best option for that specific need.
Now, cardio is great at strengthening our heart. We need to do that. We do need cardio in our lives. I know that those of us who perhaps struggle with some cardio issues maybe wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. We need to be able to do cardio, we need to be able to build our endurance level and build the strength of our heart.
But if body transformation is what you’re looking for, then I have to pose the question, do you really need traditional cardio? Do you need to go and run six miles, or go and get on the elliptical for an hour and a half? What is it that your body needs?
Well, the problem with doing cardio is it typically going to make you a smaller version of the shape that you already are. So it’s just going to take your shape and it’s going to move you down just a little bit, but it’s not going to change your waistline, it’s not going to change your body fat level, it’s not going to change your muscle tone and all those things.
So a lot of my runners that I work with, we work a lot of cross training with them, on building strength and getting the running in, because they mentally enjoy the run. That’s fine. However, a lot of them tend to over eat. They run and they do this cardio and it feels really intense, so they may give themselves a few extra hundred or a few extra thousand calories a day, and then we end up in a big pickle.
But I wanted to kind of make you aware of the fact that the science behind what we do is almost like technology. It’s constantly evolving, therefore, changing our opinion of what works and what doesn’t, and as the Custom Fitness team, we follow that science. We follow the foundational approach and we follow the science that comes out to make sure that what we’re doing is, in fact, going to be efficient and going to be effective on your body in a healthful way, long-term, that it’s not something that you’re going to do to injure yourself now, and it’s not something that you’re going to do just for short-term and find out, well, that wasn’t the best choice. What we’re doing is foundationally and scientifically proven.
So what I wanted to kind of let you in on is that, if you are wanting to change the shape of your body, if you’re wanting to transform your body, then traditional cardio may not be where you need to be. However, metabolic strength training and interval training are really where it’s at, where we’re getting that cardio during our workouts with our weights. So we’re building strength, we’re building endurance at the same time. It’s a huge thing. So I wanted to kind of go over just a few incredible benefits to being strong, some things that you’re going to get great things out of.
Number one is that, by being strong, you’re going to improve your hormonal imbalance. If you’re struggling with fat loss, with energy, with cravings, any of that kind of stuff, it’s going to be amazing for you. It’s going to be so important as a factor of balancing that out.
Number two, it can boost your confidence. So not that looks should be our only factor, but more often than not, you will find that, when you look the way that you feel you should, it’s going to boost your confidence. Right? It’s going to make you feel better and it’s going to make you just enjoy how you look and how you feel.
So it’s also going to protect your bones. Muscle strength is going to increase your bone density. There’s reasons behind all that, because basically, your bones would like to be at a straight up and down line, and if they’re slightly leaning, which a lot of ours are from posture and things like that, they’ll give into different ways, but if we strengthen the muscles around them, those muscles are going to pull on the bones.
If we work on the posture, it’s going to start to straighten it up. As it straightens it doesn’t actually move your bone. It actually builds new bone to make that a straight line, so that’s a pretty awesome thing. As we’re pulling on those muscles, tendons, ligaments, it’s causing the bone to have to grow stronger to support that pull. So it’d be like if you had a rubber band tied around a pencil, and that rubber band was too strong for the pencil, it would break it. So instead of just staying the same, like the pencil would, your bones constantly lay down new bones. They become stronger, so that’s pretty awesome.
And it greatly decreased your risk for many age related diseases by doing that. So we’ve got clients, literally as old as a 100, that work with us, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that. Just, I love them dearly, and it makes them have stronger bones, it gives them better balance, all sorts of things. So it’s a good thing to get strong.
Okay, so then, let’s see. What were we talking about? Oh, it decreases your risk of injury. So when you’re strong, then you can more easily complete your daily tasks, like bending over, lifting boxes, lifting grocery bags, whatever it may be, and less likely to get from it. Your posture improves, enough said. Right? You’ll have less pain from said bad posture, and your good posture just looks better, which again, builds your confidence, so great things.
Another thing that you have going for you when you’re building this strength is that you can rely on yourself. So when you need to, say, store one of your suitcases overhead on an airplane, you can do it. You don’t have to ask somebody else to do it. Maybe you’re carrying your groceries to the car. You can do it. You don’t have to get somebody else to do it. So there’s a lot of great things about being strong. Having a physical dependence on someone for those types of things, sometimes takes away some of your confidence. Sometimes it just makes you feel like you just aren’t quite what you used to be, and so being strong really can help that.
But the key to getting all of these benefits is really related to strength training. I mean, it’s learning how to do it properly and progressively, it’s learning how to do the right things for your body and your needs. So if your biggest need during the day is to pick up grocery bags, then you probably don’t need to be pressing tons and tons of weight overhead all the time. Right? We need to build the strength that you need, and we want to make sure that your body has enough strength that it doesn’t have to do just what you think it’s going to do, but it can do even more, but it doesn’t have to do crazy things that don’t make sense to it either.
So that’s kind of the big thing there. We’ve got to make sure that the training that you’re doing is making sense for you, for you life, for your body, and your goals, that it’s not just pick and choose and hope that this works.
So, again, that’s kind of what my team and I do is, we create programs like that, that are foundationally, scientifically proven to make sure that you’re getting everything that you need, and that it’s going to build the strength that you need, the endurance that you need, the cardiovascular strength that you need, without doing the age old idea of working out for two or three hours a day in the gym. Our workouts are 30 minutes or less, typically, and little to no equipment.
So pretty awesome things that a lot of people can get done. And it just so happens to be our specialty, which means, if you decide that you’d like some help, if you’re ready to transform from the inside out, feel free to give us a call, 806-322-3188. We’d be happy to help you out.