Healthy Living Trains for Strength and Muscles
If you’re a regular gym rat, then tonight’s Healthy Living will probably tell you information you already know. But for others, there’s a very important element of your fitness journey that you may be neglecting. That is strength training or building muscle. Fitness Instructor, K’Waun Samuels, explains why it’s important and how you can include it into your fitness routine.
Marleni Cuellar reporting
If you’re current exercise routine only focuses on one exercise, like running, walking or riding; then you may you need to know that there’s something very important that’s missing.
K’Waun Samuels
K’Waun Samuels, Fitness Instructor, K1 Fitness
“You want to preserve and enhance your muscle mass and that’s why you absolutely need to implement a strength training program into your routine.”
K’Waun Samuels is a fitness instructor and founder of K1 Fitness. He says that cardio exercises are good but to build a healthier body you must strength training.
K’Waun Samuels
“A form of physical exercise that uses resistance to help induce muscle contractions which then in turn gives you muscle strength, anaerobic endurance, and also muscle size. From the moment that you’re born to the around the time that you turn thirty you’re muscles are growing and they’re gaining strength but at some point around the time you are in or are around thirty years old the exact opposite starts to happen you begin to lose muscle mass and muscle functionality as well and that is caused naturally by a phenomenon known as sarcopenia. But there is a way to reverse the effects of sarcopenia.”
Sarcopenia is the loss of skeletal muscle mass that happens with aging. It results in a lower metabolic rate, weakness, reduced activity levels and decreased bone density. But it is preventable and even reversible with strength training. Samuels says the biggest myth about strength training is that you’ll look like a body builder lifting lots of heavy weights.
K’Waun Samuels
“Females tend to have this notion that if they come and they do weights or strength training they’re to become manly looking and they are going to bulk up way more than they want to. What they need to understand rather than think is that muscle is a lot denser than fat. So muscle will take up a lot less pace on your body than fat would. So if you’re to compare a pound of muscle against a pound of fat they would be a huge. So it’s very important for women understand that that is generally not the case and strength training is actually going to help you lose weight more efficiently. You can do a lot of body weight exercises because they’re generally just resisting gravity. So you’re going to use your body weight. You’re going to do push-ups, some lunges, some squats. You’re going to keep the reps nice and nice slow as well. So that you’re ensuring that you’re a staying in anaerobic system because the moment you’re reps and your sets last more than two minutes and your aerobic system kicks in your heart is going to be pumping more oxygenated blood in to the muscles you are using and that counts as cardio.”
And while strength training is one of the best ways to lose weight he says it should be complemented with cardio or aerobic exercise. If you’re a beginner already doing cardio, he recommends adding at least two days a week of strength training one day dedicated to the upper body and one to the bottom. Most importantly, when it comes to building muscle you can start at any age. So, even the elderly should spend some time with their weights.
K’Waun Samuels
“That does more for you than just extend your lifetime. It also makes you independent for a longer period of time as well to do be able to do thing for yourself by yourself.”
