The Hidden Benefits of Resistance Training: Why You Need It in Your Fitness Routine

According to both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), most adults should accumulate 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week (1, 2).

By this, they generally mean cardio.

These recommendations make a lot of sense given the proven health and fitness benefits of regular cardio training (3). Compelling reasons to do your cardio include:

• Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
• Lower blood pressure
• Better blood lipid profile
• Maintenance of a healthy body weight
• Lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes
• Enhanced cognitive and mental health
• Improved functional fitness
• Longer lifespan and improved quality of life

However, you need more than cardio to consider yourself fit as, despite its numerous benefits, there are some aspects of your fitness that cardio doesn’t really affect.

And that’s where resistance training comes in.

Resistance training is another word for strength training and can mean lifting freeweights, using the machines at the gym, training with resistance bands, or doing bodyweight exercises.

Related: 13 Different Types of Strength Training – Which is Best?

Unfortunately, a lot of people are unaware of the benefits of resistance training and how much they should do. That’s because, unlike cardio, the recommendations are less widely known.

I’m a veteran personal trainer with over 30 years of professional experience and I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of consistent resistance training.

In this article, I reveal the hidden benefits of resistance training so you can see exactly why it deserves a starring role in your fitness routine.  

7 Reasons to Make Resistance Part of Your Fitness Routine

Is resistance training worth your time and energy? You bet! Here are the most important reasons to include lifting weights in your fitness program.

1. Increased Functional Strength

Strength is your ability to generate force and is dependent on the condition of your muscles. Muscle mass tends to decline with lack of use and accelerates as you age. That’s why older people are generally weaker than younger people.

Resistance training builds strength and can help slow age-related muscle loss (4).

While strength might seem unimportant, it’s something that you will miss when it’s gone. Lack of strength can make many daily activities harder, if not impossible, from walking to carrying groceries to getting out of bed.

The stronger your muscles are, the more you’ll be able to do. Not just today, but long into the future, too.

2. Stronger Bones

Resistance training isn’t just good for your muscles; it’s good for your bones as well. When you work out, your muscles pull on your bones, increasing osteoblast activity. Osteoblasts are the cells responsible for bone growth. Increased osteoblast activity creates stronger, denser bones (5).

Like strength and muscle mass, bone density decreases with age. This phenomenon is particularly common in women who often lose bone mass during menopause. Excessive bone loss is called osteoporosis, which is a disease characterized by weak, porous bones that are prone to fracture.

Resistance training makes your bones more fracture-proof which, given the prevalence and severity of things like broken hips, is a convincing reason for doing more resistance training.

3. Improved Cardiovascular Fitness and Health

Unsurprisingly, most people associate cardiovascular – heart, lung, and circulatory – fitness with cardio training. The hint is right there in the name! However, and somewhat surprisingly, resistance training also offers cardiovascular benefits.

Large-scale studies show that as little as one hour of resistance training can have a profound effect on both cardiovascular fitness and health (6).

That’s not to say that you should swap all your cardio workouts for resistance training workouts. However, it does mean that you shouldn’t feel guilty about hitting the weights instead of the treadmill a couple of times a week. 

4. Increased Mobility and Flexibility

When it comes to improving mobility and flexibility, most people turn to stretching and workouts like yoga and Pilates. In fact, resistance training has a reputation for making you “muscle-bound,” which is why it used to be excluded from many athlete’s training.  

However, research indicates that resistance training exercises that involve a large range of motion can do wonders for your joint mobility and muscle flexibility (7).

While all exercises have the potential to enhance mobility and flexibility, some of the best exercises for this purpose include:

• Deep squats
• Lunges
• Bulgarian split squats
• Romanian and stiff-legged deadlifts
• Pulldowns and pull-ups
• Dumbbell flyes
• Deficit push-ups

Related: Powerlifting for Flexibility: How Heavy Lifting Can Improve Mobility

5. Improved Insulin Sensitivity

When you eat carbohydrates, e.g., bread, rice, pasta, etc., they’re broken down into a type of sugar called glucose. Glucose is predominately transported around your body in your blood.

In response to rising blood glucose levels, your body produces the hormone insulin, which then takes the glucose to your liver and muscle cells. However, if you are insulin resistant, much of that glucose stays in your blood, negatively affecting many of your body’s organs and systems.

More and more people are becoming insulin resistant which, if ignored, can contribute to weight gain, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes.

Resistance training has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and improve the uptake of glucose from your blood and into your muscles. This effect can last up to 72 hours, meaning most people should engage in strength training several times a week (8).

This is not only good for your health, but will also make it easier to manage your weight as glucose not absorbed by the liver and muscles is more likely to be converted to and stored as fat, especially around your abdomen, i.e., belly fat.

6. Improved Brain Function and Mental Health

People who lift weights or are particularly muscular are often called meatheads. This is meant to suggest that resistance training makes you dumb. Expressions like “big, dumb guy” and “lunk” are also widely used.

Even the term “dumbbell” can be used in a derogatory way!

However, studies reveal that resistance training is actually very good for your brain, and can improve many aspects of its function and health (9).

The brain benefits of regular resistance training include:

1. Improved memory
2. Enhanced problem-solving skills
3. Reduced risk of cognitive decline
4. Increased brain plasticity
5. Improved focus and attention
6. Enhanced mood
7. Reduced stress

Related: Sweat Away Stress: The Best Exercises for Anxiety Relief

So, rather than making you dumber, it seems that resistance training could actually enhance your brainpower and help ward off the cognitive decline commonly associated with age. It may even protect against neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and Parkinson’s (10).

Being called a meathead doesn’t sound so bad, now – right?!

7. Easier Weight Management and Fat Loss

Most people associate cardio with weight loss. This makes sense given that cardio preferentially burns fat for fuel. You may even have heard of the so-called fat-burning zone, which is the intensity level at which fat burning is highest, typically around 60-70% of your maximum heart rate.

However, as effective as cardio can be for fat loss, it’s not the only way to manage your weight – resistance training works, too (11).

The ways in which resistance training can help you lose or control your weight include:

Increased Energy Expenditure

People often do cardio for its kilocalorie-burning effect. However, resistance training also burns kilocalories, albeit mainly in the form of glucose. That said, it doesn’t actually matter where the kilocalories come from; so long as you use more energy than you consume, you should burn fat and lose weight.

Elevated Metabolic Rate

Your metabolic rate is the amount of energy your body uses per day, usually measured in kilocalories. Resistance training increases your metabolic rate while you are doing it and also for several hours afterward. In addition, the process of building and maintaining muscle mass uses additional energy.

Prevents Muscle Loss During a Diet

Eating less can cause your body to lose muscle. This is a survival response designed to ensure your fat stores last as long as possible.

While such an action may be useful if you are starving on a desert island, it’s less helpful when you’re trying to lose weight on purpose. That’s because losing muscle will lower your metabolic rate, making it much harder to burn fat and lose weight.

Your body operates on the principle of “use it or lose it,” and regular resistance training will help preserve your existing muscle mass despite eating less. Minimizing muscle loss will help you maintain a healthy, fat-burning metabolic rate.

Improved Insulin Sensitivity

As discussed earlier, resistance training increases insulin sensitivity which promotes the uptake of glucose from your blood to your liver and muscle cells. Lower blood glucose enhances fat burning and decreases fat storage. This effect lasts as long as three days, making resistance training a very potent weight control aid.

Encourages Healthy Eating Habits

Getting the most from resistance training invariably involves modifying your diet. Most regular resistance exercisers increase their protein intake which promotes satiety while increasing your metabolic rate (12).

While kilocalories still matter for weight loss, eating more protein can have a marked effect on body composition and body weight.

Conclusion

Cardio is a very valuable form of exercise, and most people should strive to accumulate the 150 minutes per week recommended by WHO and the CDC.

That said, Resistance training also deserves a place in your fitness routine, as it fills many of the gaps that cardio does not meet.

But, how much resistance training should you do?

It’s generally accepted that two full-body workouts per week will provide the benefits listed in this article. However, if you want to do more, your results may be even better. That’s especially true if you have dreams of building more muscle or getting as strong as possible.

But, for general health and well-being, two resistance training workouts a week paired with the recommended amount of cardio will help get and keep you in great shape.

References:

1. World Health Organization: Physical Activity Recommendations https://www.who.int/initiatives/behealthy/physical-activity
2. Centers for Disease Control: What You Can Do to Meet Physical Activity Recommendations https://www.cdc.gov/physical-activity-basics/guidelines/index.html
3. Warburton DE, Nicol CW, Bredin SS. Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence. CMAJ. 2006 Mar 14;174(6):801-9. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.051351. PMID: 16534088; PMCID: PMC1402378.
4. Marzuca-Nassr GN, Alegría-Molina A, SanMartín-Calísto Y, Artigas-Arias M, Huard N, Sapunar J, Salazar LA, Verdijk LB, van Loon LJC. Muscle Mass and Strength Gains Following Resistance Exercise Training in Older Adults 65-75 Years and Older Adults Above 85 Years. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2023 Oct 24;34(1):11-19. doi: 10.1123/ijsnem.2023-0087. PMID: 37875254.
5. Layne JE, Nelson ME. The effects of progressive resistance training on bone density: a review. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1999 Jan;31(1):25-30. doi: 10.1097/00005768-199901000-00006. PMID: 9927006.
6. Liu Y, Lee DC, Li Y, Zhu W, Zhang R, Sui X, Lavie CJ, Blair SN. Associations of Resistance Exercise with Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity and Mortality. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2019 Mar;51(3):499-508. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001822. PMID: 30376511; PMCID: PMC7385554.
7. Alizadeh S, Daneshjoo A, Zahiri A, Anvar SH, Goudini R, Hicks JP, Konrad A, Behm DG. Resistance Training Induces Improvements in Range of Motion: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2023 Mar;53(3):707-722. doi: 10.1007/s40279-022-01804-x. Epub 2023 Jan 9. PMID: 36622555; PMCID: PMC9935664.
8. DiMenna FJ, Arad AD. The acute vs. chronic effect of exercise on insulin sensitivity: nothing lasts forever. Cardiovasc Endocrinol Metab. 2020 Nov 19;10(3):149-161. doi: 10.1097/XCE.0000000000000239. PMID: 34386716; PMCID: PMC8352615.
9. Herold F, Törpel A, Schega L, Müller NG. Functional and/or structural brain changes in response to resistance exercises and resistance training lead to cognitive improvements – a systematic review. Eur Rev Aging Phys Act. 2019 Jul 10;16:10. doi: 10.1186/s11556-019-0217-2. PMID: 31333805; PMCID: PMC6617693.
10. Azevedo CV, Hashiguchi D, Campos HC, Figueiredo EV, Otaviano SFSD, Penitente AR, Arida RM, Longo BM. The effects of resistance exercise on cognitive function, amyloidogenesis, and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. Front Neurosci. 2023 Mar 2;17:1131214. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1131214. PMID: 36937673; PMCID: PMC10017453.
11. Wewege MA, Desai I, Honey C, Coorie B, Jones MD, Clifford BK, Leake HB, Hagstrom AD. The Effect of Resistance Training in Healthy Adults on Body Fat Percentage, Fat Mass and Visceral Fat: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2022 Feb;52(2):287-300. doi: 10.1007/s40279-021-01562-2. Epub 2021 Sep 18. PMID: 34536199.
12. Leidy HJ, Clifton PM, Astrup A, Wycherley TP, Westerterp-Plantenga MS, Luscombe-Marsh ND, Woods SC, Mattes RD. The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance. Am J Clin Nutr. 2015 Jun;101(6):1320S-1329S. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.114.084038. Epub 2015 Apr 29. PMID: 25926512.

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