We strength train because it puts a kind of stress on your body that you don’t get much of anymore, the good kind. Working out is a stand-in for the movement we used to do thousands of years ago. It’s a modern fix for a modern lifestyle.
Your body adapts, and it adapts well. It won’t work harder than it has to. If it doesn’t need to build more muscle, it won’t. Food is the same. Your brain knows when the next meal is coming, but the rest of your body still runs like an animal’s. It doesn’t know when food is next available, so anything extra you eat gets stored just in case. Who would have thought.
That’s one of the catches of modern life. When you take out the movement that shaped our genes over thousands of years, it’s no surprise the body reacts badly to a long lull.
So, we say strength training.
But how do you know you’re doing it well?
It’s worth finding a coach or allied health professional who understands the body, not just on the surface but how it all connects and works together. They can run a biomechanical assessment that reads how you move. We do this with everyone before they join our group classes. Two people might move much the same, and then an assessment shows one of them is hyper- or hypo-mobile without knowing it. That matters a lot when you’re bringing someone into a group setting.
After that it’s fairly simple. Strength training with a bit of anaerobic work keeps the body active, supports your muscles and joints, keeps the blood moving, and sets you up well.
One benefit you might not think about is the chemistry. Exercise releases a handful of feel-good chemicals: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. They’re worth understanding, so you know how they affect you.
Endorphins
- They serve one purpose, to mask our pain. Often released in response to stress or fear, they cover physical pain with a bit of pleasure. The “runner’s high”.
- An obvious example is laughing. The body releases the feel-good chemical to mask the pain of our organs being convulsed.
Dopamine
- This is the feeling after we’ve finished something that mattered: a task, a project, a goal, or a marker on the way to a bigger goal. That feeling when you cross something off the list is dopamine.
- When we’re given something to complete or a number to reach, as long as we can see it or picture it clearly, we get a little burst of dopamine to get us going.
Serotonin
- This is the feeling of pride, the one we get when we sense that others like or respect us. It makes us feel strong and confident.
- As social animals, we don’t just want the approval of our tribe, we need it. It matters. We want to feel valued for the effort we put in for the group, or for the good of others in it.
Oxytocin
- This one’s a favourite for a lot of people. The feeling of friendship, love or deep trust. What we feel around our closest friends or the colleagues we trust.
- It’s the feeling when we do something kind for someone, or someone does something kind for us. Without oxytocin we wouldn’t bother being generous, and there’d be no empathy or bonds of trust to speak of.
- When we’re among people we trust, and who trust us, the load can be shared across the whole group.
There’s a lot more to strength training, and to exercise in general. This barely scratches the surface, but these are some of the benefits that get overlooked when you think about building a healthy life.