This is one of my longest articles I have ever written. But, there is a reason for that. I strongly believe, that lifting heavy weights regularly and intensively is one of the, if not the best single thing you can do to improve your health, to become invincible and to stay healthy. And a lot of people either don’t believe it or don’t know about it. Yes, lifting heavy things. And if you are already not doing it, let me suggest that to at least worry you.
Lifting heavy things has more benefits for your health than anything else in the world
Many people consider getting their daily 30 minutes of exercise as a plain cardiovascular activity. They say: I just need to get that heart pumping for 30 minutes everyday and I will stay healthy. Wrong! Very wrong! Just look at yourself. Do you manage to do 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise everyday? If you actually are that rear individual who manages to do this, are you happy with how you look and feel? Is there still a room for improvement? I will answer that question for you. It certainly is.
While it is clearly beneficial for your health to do 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise everyday, you could get even more health benefits from mixing it with some weight bearing exercises. Lifting heavy weights regularly is extremely beneficial for us human beings. And I can tell with a certainty, that it is much more beneficial for your health than cardiovascular exercise. While cardiovascular exercise still has it’s own important place in overall health and fitness, intensive weight lifting is more natural and beneficial for us.
Lifting heavy things or weight training is the the best thing you can do to improve your health. And that’s why I am starting from healthy to invincible program with lifting heavy things on a first place. If you want to bring your overall health and fitness to the next level and you already don’t do weight training, than you have a huge reserve here. Adding intensive weight training to your overall lifestyle religiously consistent will bring you much closer to becoming invincible.
That really makes me to realize, that my profession is actually one of the most beneficial in the world for other people. Not that I want to downgrade other professions, they all are important, but showing somebody how to lift weights properly and intensively and leading them through the incredibly beneficial for their health weight training session, however boring it seems to be for them is the best thing that they can be actually doing.
I consider myself being more important in people’s life’s than their doctors 🙂 While I and another good trainers help people prevent all kinds of diseases, their doctor will use some kind of temporary band aid for their condition. So if you are not already seriously sick and you are looking for a good doctor, stop now! Find a good trainer instead, that will show you how to lift heavy weights properly. And you might not need the doctor at all.
Lifting heavy things is primal for us human beings. Long time ago, when there were not heavy duty machines to help us build our homes and help us with any other heavy activity, people used to do this stuff manually. It was heavy, hard and often times dangerous, but that made humans extremely durable, self-sufficient and independent until very old age.
Women and weight training
Both men and women benefit the same from lifting heavy weights regularly. Although it seems more natural for men to lift heavy things, woman’s body benefits the same but without becoming bulky. Women are afraid of becoming big and bulky from weight training, like men do. But, there is no reason to be afraid to become big bulky woman when you weight train. Woman’s body doesn’t produce as much testosterone as men’s body does. And hormone testosterone is responsible for substantial muscle growth from weight training.
In my experience as a trainer, I actually see women lifting much heavier weight than men do. Isn’t that crazy? Men are much weaker than women who lift weights, while fit strong women who lift very heavy weights are very small. If you are a guy who thinks that you don’t need to weight train, because you are already strong, I would challenge you to join us for lifting session with one of my tiny, strong lady’s I train. She will clearly kick your but anytime. Yes guys! Women who lift heavy weights are stronger than you guys not lifting weights. And if I were you, it would make me at least a little uncomfortable.
Lifting weights creates lean, healthy and very durable body
Lifting heavy things promotes great health. It helps build muscles, strengthen bones, it burns more calories to stay lean. Way, way more calories than cardiovascular exercise does. And many people don’t seem to be believing this. They keep working the treadmill everyday without seeing any weight loss happening. Doing cardiovascular exercise to loose fat is old school advice.
Thanks to intensive and religiously consistent weight training I manage to stay very lean. You can clearly see my abdominal muscles visible, which makes my fat percentage between 7 to 10%. I haven’t missed my weight training workout for 7 years now, with occasional weekly surfing trips when I just surf and don’t do any other exercise. You can get very tired surfing all day long.
Lifting heavy weights helps to process sugar, glucose from the blood and with that it prevents diabetes. It promotes better sleep and rest efficiency. It keeps hormonal balance in our bodies. It promotes natural creation of testosterone and growth hormones in our bodies, that are also considered as drugs of youth. But don’t try to buy them in the store, it will most likely not help you at all, if everything else is out of whack in your life. Create it naturally by lifting heavy weights regularly. And all this leads to an lean, healthy, very durable human body.
But I hate weight training
I know some people that hate weight training. They usually say: Milan, but I don’t see myself ever doing it. My answer is always the same. Do you like brushing your teeth? I don’t think so. I hate it too. But I still do it. If you don’t want your teeth to rot and fall off, you will keep brushing them regularly. Same way, if you want to stay healthy, fit and get closer to becoming invincible, and I don’t care how much you hate it, you will get your weight training done regularly and intensively. If you don’t, than, like I said before, you are playing a Russian roulette with miss death and not doing everything you can to improve your health and fitness.
So, if you hate weight training, get over it. It’s perfectly ok to hate it. As long as you still do it. And that’s what actually makes really successful people successful and really healthy. They learned to love to do things they hate. And so can you!
If you want to be very healthy, you need to lift very heavy weights regularly
Adding lifting weights to your weekly routine is not hard. It takes about 45 minutes on 2 nonconsecutive days per week. All you need is few heavy dumbbells, chin up bar and maybe some exercise bands. If you have a health club membership, that’s even better, since they always have exercise weight machines there and everything else you need. And they are much safer for beginners and older people than dumbbells. But having a health club membership is not necessary to get enough beneficial weight training done. I consider two best strength training exercises in the world to be push ups and pull ups, and you can do this anywhere in the nature.
Lifting heavy weights doesn’t have to be a perfectly scheduled either. If you don’t have time to do weight training because you are busy, there is a way to go around it. Just keep your dumbbells, exercise bands and pull up bar near you, whatever you are doing. And than, either you are at home cooking or you are at work writing e-mails, have short weight lifting brakes.
It will look something like this: you do few stretches to warm up, than you check your e-mail and answer few. Than you stand up and do a set of shoulder presses. First set will be 20 repetitions with lighter weight. Than you sit down back to your work station and answer another 3 e-mails and stand up again and do 15 repetitions with little bit heavier weight. Repeat it one more time, doing 11 repetitions with the heaviest load.
Once you finished 3 repetitions of shoulder presses, you move to another exercise, like for example squats with dumbbells and so on until you finish your entire weight workout while working. It saves you lots of time and it has the same effect as just focusing on weights.
I do this kind of workout quite often. Like for example on Thursday, I got up at 5:30 AM and while I was getting workout plans ready for my training day I did 3 sets of chin ups and 3 sets of dumbbell presses on ball.
The interesting thing is, that instead of my work suffering from constant interruptions, I can focus on my work much better with these heavy weight lifting breaks. I actually become very highly productive using this kind of workout/work system. I think, the reason is that my brain gets more oxygenated and endorphins floating in my blood make me feel good. You too should give it a try. And I am sure it will work similarly for you too.
The days I do my heavy weight training are Sunday’s and Wednesday’s. I usually do 3 sets for every major muscle group – legs, back, chest, arms and shoulders. I do some abs at the end, and my workout is over.
If you are a beginner, it’s probably a very good idea to read few books about weight training before you start or hire a good personal trainer for few sessions to show you the basics. And don’t just say, that you are going to do it. Do it!
I have developed some work out programs:
Gym workouts:
Workout plan #1 – simple, effective and safe all-body-machine-resistance workout
Outdoors workouts:
Highly functional workout – somewhere just behind your houseÂ
Home workouts:
Home workout plan for elderly people and beginnersÂ
Resistance band strength workout for Zlatka
But don’t let that to limit you. Develop, or let somebody develop the right program, that fits the best to you.
How heavy should the weight be?
If you are just starting, the weight you are lifting should be light. And over time it needs to be increased to the maximum you can lift in 7-20 repetitions. More repetitions you do to tire that muscle group, safer the exercise will be. But, when you become very consistent and you don’t have any injuries, don’t be afraid to increase the weight and do less repetitions with it. Simply, make it very heavy.
Don’t start lifting very heavy weights right away. It could be dangerous. As I am known of saying: you have to deserve to lift heavy weights. And how do you deserve it? By being consistent. By showing up on your scheduled weight training workouts no matter what. Otherwise, lifting heavy weights could become dangerous to your health instead of it being beneficial for it.
Weight lifting has to become a part of your life
If you want to bring your overall health to the next level, find a way to incorporate weight training to your lifestyle. Again, if you don’t, than your health will stay just average. You will be healthy for the most part if you do everything else right. But, you will not ever become invincible. And as I said before, being average swimmer or chess player is certainly ok, but having an average health is not. You don’t want average health. Average health means living in fear everyday, that something in your body will stop working right.
There is a reason why lifting heavy weights is the first step in becoming invincible. It simply is the most important and primal thing for us human beings. It helps process the energy in our body faster, it builds vital muscle mass, it keeps hormonal balance in order.
When you are lifting heavy things, you are sending a signal to your brain, that you have to keep functioning on high level, that you have to keep going, that survival of your tribe depends on all your hard work. And that makes your body functioning at it’s best and closer to becoming invincible.
Of course , nobody really depends on your weight lifting in the gym, but that’s only just another way how to trick the nature. And it doesn’t care if you are doing pull downs on the machine in the gym or lifting dumbbells in the front of the mirror. The brain and body thinks, that you are building a shelter for your tribe members to survive, so you too have to survive. And you can’t let them down. Getting sick is not an option. And you are becoming invincible.
very good article best read in a long time – thankyou !!