Waves of Love: Love Your Body with Strength Training

Strength training is necessary for EVERYONE! You don’t have to be the human in the gym with all of the plates on the bar (although that’s super cool!), you can hang out by the dumbbells and kettlebells if you like! Personally, strength training has made me feel so confident and helped me acquire new skills—like surfing—quickly. As the saying goes, cardio will change the size of your body but weight training will change the shape.

Let’s go over a few benefits of strength training and then check back on Tuesday and Friday for two NEW strength workouts!

Strength training is king for preventing injury. It not only improves the strength of your muscles but also increases bone density as well as joint and ligament strength. Going through full range of motion exercises that emphasize a squat (sit) hinge (not the dating app, think about a doorway), pressing, and pulling is the foundation of a great strength training program.

Did you know that having more muscle means your metabolism is faster at rest? Yep! If you have more muscle mass, it’s more metabolically expensive to keep so you burn more energy at rest than someone of a comparable body shape that doesn’t have as much muscle.

It’s empowering, especially for women. I’ve heard so many women say that they don’t want to get “bulky” from strength training. While I know a few women who can look at a set of dumbbells and their muscles grow, it’s very uncommon. Putting on that degree of muscle requires specific nutrition, nutrient timing, and training to make that happen. When I started to weight train, I noticed that I was getting the body composition that I was chasing for YEARS of disordered behavior and heavy restriction. I cannot tell you how cool it feels to be strong enough to pull myself up on the pull-up bar for multiple reps and to be able to throw heavy weights around.