What is weight lifting good for? Weight lifting is used to better your health, cardiovascular and muscular endurance. Weight lifting isn’t meant just to get you sickeningly buff of cut; it is meant to keep you in shape and to tone your body. Reasons to weight train are to maintain body weight, lose fat, and muscular endurance.

One benefit of weight training is you gain balance and muscular control of you body. When you weight lift it trains your muscles. Upper body weight lifting minimizes stiffness and fatigue in the arms, neck, shoulders, and areas that rotate, and in turn it enables a runner to heighten their pace, because the legs can only go as fast as the arms move.

When a person runs, it creates a muscular imbalance, as the calves and hamstrings develop faster than the quads and shin. Having strong quads and hips help protect these areas from injury when running down hill. Another benefit of weight lifting, it strengthens the abdominal region. It protects your abdomen as well as your back. And it assists in maintaining posture, if that is an issue.

Weight lifting has many other benefits such as fat loss and lean muscle, the increase in lean muscle mass that results from strength training is key to your body's ability to metabolize glucose that burns fat. Body composition is a major part of muscular development, as a person ages, lean muscle decreases while fats deposit. Muscular strength also declines approximately 5% per decade for the untrained individual. Strength training slows down this process even as a person reaches their senior years.

Weight training helps protect bones. This is an important benefit, particularly for women, as decreased estrogen production causes bone demineralization. This in turn increases the risks of osteoporosis and the additional risk of incurring stress fractures. Muscles tugging on bone structure as a result of weight training facilitate bone regeneration. And it is proven that weight training seems to reduce the risk factors for adult-onset diabetes as well as heart disease.

There are also some precautions to weight lifting: 1. If you have a history of serious medical problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, check with your physician before beginning a strength-training program. 2. Seek the advice of a trainer to insure that you utilize proper form. If you are using machines, be sure that the seat and pads are properly adjusted to the correct setting. 3. Warm up with some cardiovascular activities such as jogging or cycling before lifting. 4. Make sure that your muscles get adequate rest between periods of lifting every other day or a minimum of three days per week, don't forget to get enough sleep. 5. Emphasize lighter weights and more repetitions (12-18 reps) as opposed to lifting the maximum weight you can handle a few times. 6. Focus on the exercising the large muscle groups first followed by the smaller groups. For example, when working the upper body, start with the chest and lats and conclude with the biceps and triceps. 7. Don't hold your breath while lifting weights. Breathe in on the relaxation phase and out while performing the resistance/lifting part of the exercise. 8. Move your body through the entire range of motion of the lift. Don't "lock" your joints while performing the exercise. Be sure to stretch thoroughly after lifting.

It is important to keep in mind that you probably won't lose weight when you infuse a weight-conditioning program into your overall fitness routine. Assuming that you eat sensibly, your percentage of total body fat should decrease. Weighing yourself on scales can be very misleading and perhaps may also be discouraging. Many people who first begin a weight-training program express concern that they will develop huge, bulky muscles. Unlike power lifters and body builders who focus their workouts on lifting the heaviest amount of weight they can handle for a few repetitions, the notion of "bulking-up" is not grounded in reality. By following the recommendations outlined in this section, you will instead become a stronger runner with improved muscular tone and definition.