WEIGHT BEARING AND WEIGHT LIFTING EXERCISES
By Tom Wilson
Up to this point, much of The Daniel Plan has focused on exercise and diet as a means to increase your overall internal health, help you maintain a healthy body weight and prepare your body for activity through core work and stretching.
Now it’s time to pick it up a notch!
By incorporating weight-bearing and weight lifting exercise, you take this process to a whole new level! These types of workouts will turbo-charge your routine and provide you with a powerful, calorie burning workout while promoting a healthy skeletal system.
The benefits of a healthy bone structure are often overlooked when designing and implementing an overall health regime. As you age, your body is constantly breaking down bone and rebuilding it. Unfortunately, the older we get, the slower our body rebuilds bone and soon bone deterioration outweighs the bone that is being built.
Weight-bearing and weight lifting exercise can help speed the rate of bone rebuilding and aid in the prevention of degenerative bone conditions such as osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a condition where the bones become porous and fragile and can easily break. The good news is you are never too old to build stronger bones through weight-bearing and weight lifting exercise. Other health benefits from weight bearing/lifting exercise include:
- Improved balance
- Increased muscular strength
- Increased muscular endurance
- Enhanced joint stability
- Increased coordination
- Better posture
- Increased flexibility
- Improved cardiovascular health
- Weight control
- Overall sense of well-being
