Why is it important to exercise and strengthen your body’s skeletal muscle? Carol Harrison, senior exercise physiologist at MD Anderson, says strength training offers big benefits. Here’s why she recommends including it in your workout.
- It aids your metabolism. This means it helps your body turn food into energy, and to grow and rebuild cells.
- Strength training helps you lose weight. While people usually associate aerobic exercise with weight loss, strength training also helps you shed pounds while building healthy, lean muscles.
- It builds bone density. Your bones tend to break down and become frail as you age. Strength training can help you avoid these bone-wasting effects of aging, called osteoporosis.
- Strength training helps improve and maintain physical functioning. We tend to lose muscle mass as we age, which can make it more difficult to do daily activities like climbing stairs and carrying groceries. Strength training can help maintain these abilities.
Strength training also helps cancer survivors cope with some of the energy-draining side effects of cancer and cancer treatment. “A strong body can better withstand treatment,” Harrison adds.
