Resistance training is at the core of stop loosing muscle mass management. It’s essential. And everybody who wants to prevent loosing muscle mass has to put it to work at some point and ideally sticking with it for the rest of his/her life. It’s like brushing teeth every morning and evening. If you want them to stay strong and healthy, you will brush them and take care of them on daily basis. And people are very good at taking care of their teeth.
How about getting good at stoping the loss of muscle mass when we get older? It is by no means less important than taking care of your teeth. I would go as far as to say, it is way more important than taking care of your teeth. But how many people do it? Not that many. Considering how important preventing muscle mass loss is to your quality of life, it is the most important thing in your life. More muscle saves life’s at many levels from heart health and cancer to mental well being and Alzheimer’s disease. You either prevent the loss of muscle mass and than build some extra of it, or you will at some point of your life face these scary diseases.
Resistance training
Now, that you know how important resistance training is to your muscle mass preservation and with it to your overall health and well being, you are going to have to put it on you to do list. Just realize, that no matter how much you hate the idea of lifting weights, you are going to learn it and do it. You don’t have any other option. You have to do it.
With this in your mind, you are planting a seed. Your subconscious mind now knows, that in order to live a good and healthy life, you need to stop loosing muscle mass and maybe gain some extra of it to improve your life, health and performance even further. And in order to achieve it, you need to do resistance training. There is no any other way around it. It’s a done deal.
So now, when you have the importance of resistance/strength training ingrained in your mind, you are going to slowly move it into action. You don’t have to rush with this. You can get overwhelmed by large flow of new information. The things you need to do and the things you have been missing for such a long time.
Your first steps in strength training
Step 1: go to the library and pick up 3 books about strength training. In course of 1 month read them all. Strength training for dummies is a great book to start with. This will make you understand what strength training is all about.
Step 2a: joint neighborhood gym and start doing some cardiovascular exercises on machines while observing people lifting weights.
Step 2b: decide to start your strength training at home and buy pair of 5 pound dumbbells and a pair of 8 pound dumbbells. For fitter and younger people, this weight is going to be heavier – pair of 8 pound and 12 pound dumbbells. For older people and beginners the weight will be lighter – pair of 3 pound and 5 pound dumbbells.
Step 3a: if you are a member of a gym, contact a personal trainer and tell him that you would like him to design you the whole body strength training, muscle building plan for 2 workout sessions per week. Tell him to put it on paper for you. It should be 2 plans for two different nonconsecutive days like for example Mondays and Thursdays. These plans should contain multi joint/multicore exercises for all major muscle groups of your body with different exercises for each on different days.
Than have at least two weeks worth of sessions – 4 sessions with the trainer to work on these 2 strength training plans. You should understand the basics after these two weeks. But, some people will need more time. Than try to keep going on your own or stick with the trainer if you can afford it. It is a very well spend money, no matter how much the trainer charges, or how broke you are if he is good. Good trainers are worth more than doctors since they can give you the benefits that the whole medicine and biotechnology is still trying to match. But they never will. Staying fit and healthy takes effort. And a pill is not going to solve the problem.
Health benefits of exercise, strength training and healthy diet are by far the highest from all pills in the world. And good trainer will pack these benefits into his own pill – teaching you the most important for your health. And if you think that you can’t afford it, let me just suggest to you that you can’t not afford to not afford it.
If the trainer is really good, he has a reputation of being a great trainer and you believe him, than pay him whatever he wants. Good personal trainers are hard to find.
Step 3b: start working out on your own. I will talk about it and show you how to do it in the next chapter.
Step 4: persist! Keep learning and follow with your studying while sticking with your strength training. If you can manage to do this, overtime, you will become very knowledgeable in resistance/strength training. Great thing to have, since it saves life’s. It’s like with everything else. If you decide to learn how to play guitar and you stick with it, over time you will become really good at it. The same way with strength training. If you keep at it and keep learning, you will become great at it.
Your muscle is your healthy life
I think teaching kids early how to stop muscle mass loss should be the number one subject in schools. If everybody learns this and manages to apply it in their life’s and persists with it into an old age, we would be the healthiest and strongest, not mentioning creative (yes it has this power) nation in the world. So why do school specialists obsess about an English literature? It’s worthless to these young people. They want to live a great, healthy strong life’s! And Ernest Hemingway is not going to help them with it. No offense to Ernest. I think he was a great writer.
In the next chapter, I will show you how you can design your own strength training program and slowly start on your own way to stop loosing the muscle mass and building some extra of it. It’s not hard. Anybody can learn it. And everybody should. You need to become committed to it and persist. And as you already know, it is so important for your strong, bold and healthy life, you don’t have any other choice.
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