Whether your main goal is to grow as much muscle as you can or to get as strong as you can, you'll find that resistance and weight training are your two options. But how do the two compare, and which one should you choose? Scroll down below to find the answers to your questions.
What Is Resistance Training?
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Resistance training is a type of exercise intended to increase muscle endurance and strength. It involves working your muscles against some kind of resistance. This resistance can be provided by resistance bands, or even your own body weight defying gravity.
Benefits of Resistance Training
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Although the main goal of resistance training is to improve physical strength and endurance, there are numerous other health advantages. The following are a few advantages of including resistance training in your exercise regimen:
1) Resistance Training Increases Bone Density
Resistance exercise training promotes bone density and reduces bone loss, which is a key factor in the prevention of age-related fractures. By helping you in gaining more muscle, resistance exercises can help you delay the rate at which your bones deteriorate.
2) Resistance Training Helps in Posture Improvement
Although core exercises are frequently viewed as the way to develop six-pack abs before summer, your core is far more important than that. It helps to support your spine which helps in posture improvement. The majority of resistance training exercises require you to engage your core, which will help improve posture.
3) Resistance Training Reduces Your Risk of Injury
Most injuries are caused due to weak ligaments and muscles. Resistance training helps your ligaments become more flexible and promotes muscular balance, which will help you avoid common movement-related injuries.
What Is Weight Training?
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Compared to resistance training, which entails a variety of body weight exercises, weight training or strength training is more focused. Like resistance training, the ultimate objective is to gain strength. But unlike adding resistance to your workouts, weight training involves lifting weights. The weights can be either free weights or weight machines.
Benefits of Weight Training
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Weight training is not just for bulking up. It offers many advantages, including the following:
1) Weight Training Increases Lean Body Mass
Strength training can help you gain lean body mass especially if you are targeting multiple muscle groups. In addition to enhancing your appearance and altering your body composition for the better, gaining lean body mass boosts your metabolism, improves your health, increases your strength, and enhances your level of physical fitness.
2) Weight Training Will Help You Lose Weight
Strength training helps you lose weight like all other forms of exercise. This is due to the fact that when your muscle mass increases through weight training, you will burn more calories every day even while at rest. Because of these favorable changes in body composition, weight training is one of the best kinds of exercise for people who want to shed body fat.
3) Weightlifting Lowers the Risk of Chronic Illness
Older people are more susceptible to chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis. Fortunately, weight exercise fights a variety of illnesses that reduce your quality of life. Weight-lifting accomplishes this by reducing the possibility of insulin resistance and enhancing the health of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels.
Resistance Training vs Weight Training: Which One Should You Choose?
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Naturally, just like with anything else in fitness, it all relies on your objectives. Resistance training may be preferable if you want to be more mobile since it frequently incorporates flexibility. But if you want to substantially improve your strength and gain muscle, focusing on a strength training program is unquestionably the best course of action.
However, you can carry out both. You can dedicate a few days a week to strength training only, which will involve performing challenging lifts with few repetitions. Then, after a sufficient amount of recovery time, you can dedicate one day to general resistance training. While including strength and resistance training in your workout routine, remember to add a type of aerobic exercise to increase the calorie burn. This is especially important if you want to lose weight.
Summary
Weightlifting and resistance training are more alike than different. When you include both in your regimen, your health and your performance will both improve. While you're here, check out Acoupoint to browse for athletic equipment that you can use while exercising.
