Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Building Muscle And Increasing Your Metabolism

As we age you have read multiple articles by now on how we all loose lean muscle mass. Due to the loss of muscle, not only do day to day activities become more difficult but our bodies metabolism slows down as well. When the metabolism slows down our bodies do not burn the calories like it once did therefore we begin to see a gain in body weight.

When we were younger you were able to stay lean as your lean body mass was much higher in other words you had more muscle to burn those calories. You also were much more active and your body required the nourishment. Its important to keep exercise going through out your lifetime. Weight training is the type of exercise needed to keep muscle from loosing its strength and maintaining its function. Its been proven that weight training at any age can be beneficial and in fact you can increase its size as well. As we age we will not build the muscle at the rate we did in our teenage years, but it can be accomplished.

There! is more to it then just picking up a weight and throwing it around. There must be a proper technique used for instance, the right amount of resistance used has to be considered as well. If you have injuries they must be compensated for, be sure to check with your doctor before starting any exercise program once you reach 40 for most individuals.

The type of exercises you can do are what are called compound movements or exercises. They work multiple muscle groups using one exercise. The most basic compound movements are the bench press, squat, and the deadlift. There are others as well but these three if they are done alone will be sufficient to keep your body fined tuned and to keep your lean muscle mass high. It also helps to throw in some cardiovascular work as well but to maintain strength and muscle, weight training is the way to go.

Complete these three exercises for 3-4 sets each 10-15 reps, some may prefer 8-10 just use a weight that at the end of the re! p count is sufficient to fatigue the muscle group you have tar! geted.

These exercises can be completed to start with three times a week. As you become more advanced, you can increase the number of days you lift and add different types of exercises as the body will adapt quickly to the same movements.

Proper nutrition is important and that is a subject in itself as well. Every one of us as we age should be adding a weight training program to our schedule to help combat the breakdown that is coming if you do not keep yourself strong. Pay the price now to improve your health or pay the doctor for the prescriptions that you will need to survive.

Richard Haynes
LPTA/CPT
Punta Gorda, Florida. 33950

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_A_Haynes


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