Go Heavy or Go Home (Lift Weights to Lose Weight, Look Good and Live Long)
Go heavy or go home...
You’ve probably heard the saying before.
You’ve most likely heard it from me and you’ve almost certainly heard it from my wife.
Whether you’re trying to lose fat, gain muscle or just enjoy a healthy life, lifting heavy weight has fabulous benefits.
When we say lifting heavy we mean heavy relative to you.
You don’t have to put a barbell with 250 pounds on your back and squat “ass to the grass” unless you’re ready to do it. My mom is 76-years young, works out with us and squats with the women’s Olympic bar. She worked her way up to it starting with dumbbells, then the lighter technique bar and finally the big-girl bar.
Every step along the way was heavy at the time.
In our experience – and science confirms it – when it comes to losing weight, building and toning muscle, looking good and feeling like a million bucks, nothing works better than old-fashioned weight lifting. Combine it with a good nutrition program and you’ll get shredded, add lean muscle and flat-out get stronger no matter how old you are.
And that’s why we like it.
Make big, compound lifts – Deadlift, Squat, Bench and Shoulder Press – the foundation of your workout program.
Those are lifts that use multiple joints and muscle groups. They build strength and stamina, they torch fat and they make you stronger. People have done them for years and will continue to do them because they work.
And they always will.
Squats, lunges, deadlifts and presses, along with their variations, build total body strength. They work multiple muscle groups including the stabilizer muscles. That’s what burns fat, builds and tones muscle and gives you the strength and energy to live your life to the fullest.
If you’ve read our article My Middle Age is Spreading then you know weight training is great at fighting the effects of “slowing metabolism as we get older.” It increases your resting metabolic rate because your body burns fat as it makes repairs during recovery after your workout. On top of that, adding muscle mass requires more fuel each day just to maintain the new muscle tissue.
That means more food and more food usually means more fun.
A 55-year old male that’s 200 pounds and 13% body fat gets to eat about 10% more than a 200-pounder with 23% body fat. The same goes for a 55-year old, 120-pound female with 23% body fat compared to one the same age and weight that’s 33%.
Muscle is a calorie furnace that requires constant fueling.
Body fat is made to sit around as stored energy. If you want to have a faster metabolism and enjoy eating more food then put on some meat.
You’ll look and feel fantastic but that’s not the only benefit of heavy (relative to you) resistance training.
For those that want to maximize both the years in their life and the life in their years then lifting is the way to go.
Weight training as a fundamental part of an exercise program has been endorsed by the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association and the American College of Sports Medicine. It’s effective in changing body composition by helping to remove fat, add muscle and in reducing cardiovascular disease factors such as A1C, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood glucose levels.
Want to get rid of your blood pressure medication? There’s good news there, too.
A systematic review of randomized, controlled trials conducted through 2020 suggests that strength training with moderate to higher loads and intensity for 2-3 days per week could decrease blood pressure in hypertensive individuals in as little as eight weeks.
That’s two short months to lower your blood pressure.
There’s no doubt you’ve been inundated with commercials touting the latest drugs to combat Type 2 diabetes. The good news is research has shown weight training reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes and also lowers A1C scores on those already diagnosed with it. In a head-to-head comparison weight training by itself was shown to be more effective than aerobic training alone.
It’s also an effective weapon in fighting co-morbidity factors that accompany Type 2 diabetes like heart disease, osteoporosis and peripheral neuropathy.
One of the most important benefits is the fact resistance training has been shown to have cognitive benefits including helping to prevent degeneration of some areas of the brain known to be vulnerable to Alzheimer’s. Those who have seen loved ones go through this know doing anything to fight this horrible disease is worth it.
There’s nothing like looking and feeling good and there’s no better way to enjoy life than by being strong and healthy.
Remember when we talked about hiking up that mountain trail and seeing the world from the top of it? Nothing tops having the energy to keep up with the grandkids or enjoying a day working out in the yard and the best way to do that is to be strong.
The key to all of this is to start simple and build consistency. Once you can do the basics – workout regularly, improve your eating and start building some habits – you can add pieces that keep the process moving and make the progress and results permanent.
Wouldn’t it be great to see the scale start moving and your body start looking and feeling better than ever?
Go heavy or go home.
Regards,
Henry
Current Sports Medicine Reports 11(4):p 209-216, July/August 2012. | DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8.
Correia RR, Veras ASC, Tebar WR, Rufino JC, Batista VRG, Teixeira GR. Strength training for arterial hypertension treatment: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. Sci Rep. 2023 Jan 5;13(1):201. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-26583-3. PMID: 36604479; PMCID: PMC9814600.
Kobayashi Y, Long J, Dan S, Johannsen NM, Talamoa R, Raghuram S, Chung S, Kent K, Basina M, Lamendola C, Haddad F, Leonard MB, Church TS, Palaniappan L. Strength training is more effective than aerobic exercise for improving glycaemic control and body composition in people with normal-weight type 2 diabetes: a randomised controlled trial. Diabetologia. 2023 Oct;66(10):1897-1907. doi: 10.1007/s00125-023-05958-9. Epub 2023 Jul 26. PMID: 37493759; PMCID: PMC10527535.
Strasser B, Schobersberger W. Evidence for resistance training as a treatment therapy in obesity. J Obes. 2011;2011:482564. doi: 10.1155/2011/482564. Epub 2010 Aug 10. PMID: 20847892; PMCID: PMC2931407.
Hippocampal plasticity underpins long-term cognitive gains from resistance exercise in MCI, NeuroImage: Clinical, ISSN: 2213-1582, Vol: 25, Page: 10218, 2020.
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