When exercising to enhance your overall health, it’s important to take a holistic approach to fitness. In addition to a balanced diet and regular cardio, there are great advantages to including strength classes as part of your journey to improved health and wellbeing. F45 resistance workouts are structured with full-body resistance exercises to increase muscle mass and strengthen your body and mind. Continue reading for our expert guide on the benefits of weight training to boost your health and lifestyle.
Why do strength training?
Strength training – also called ‘resistance training’ or ‘weight training’ – involves using a muscle or group of muscles to contract against external resistance. Strength classes or training can include the use of weight machines, free weights, resistance bands, your own body weight, or a combination of all techniques. This form of high-intensity exercise works to increase strength, power, muscle mass and anaerobic endurance – that is, your heart and lungs’ capacity to perform physical activity for longer. With consistent resistance training, your muscles will get stronger over time; but that’s only scratching the surface of the many benefits of weight training.¹
Strength training health benefits
It’s vital that we build and maintain strong muscles, particularly since we lose bone density as we age, making us more prone to fractures and injury.² Let’s break down the benefits of resistance training:
• Strengthens muscles so you can perform better physically
• Increases stamina, balance and agility
• Improves cardiovascular fitness
• Protects your bones and joints against injury
• Builds lean muscle mass – an absolute must when undergoing a weight loss program
• Helps reduce body fat and burn more calories post-workout
• Improves your sleep pattern
• Releases mood-boosting endorphins to help lower stress
The impacts of F45 strength workouts
If you’re new to strength training, F45 strength classes are designed to help you increase muscle mass and subsequently burn more calories after your workout is finished. Resistance workouts can offer the kickstart your body craves with a blend of explosive exercises to test your strength, endurance and stamina. We can’t overstate the importance building lean muscle mass through workouts, and at F45, we want to challenge your muscles at different angles, times and tempos to give you full-body resistance training. Below, our F45 experts will take you through the strength training benefits of our high-intensity workouts.
1. Maintaining muscle mass
When it comes to significant or rapid weight loss, it’s essential to undertake regular strength training exercise. When the body is in a calorie deficit, it will feed on whatever is available – not only can this include fat reserves, but also muscle. While it is natural to lose some muscle during weight loss (as less muscle is needed to support and move the body), a substantial loss of lean muscle mass can cause an array of physical health problems. If you are taking doctor-prescribed medication that causes weight loss, consistent strength training can mitigate this muscle mass loss.³ Find an F45 studio near you to experience strength training benefits from qualified instructors.
2. Building strength in muscle joints
As we age, it’s natural to lose bone density. When that happens, our body becomes more susceptible to osteoarthritis in the knees, hips and shoulders. One of the key health benefits of resistance training is the strengthening of your muscles to protect your joints from injury. Falls are also a very real concern as we get older, but with regular strength training, your overall joint function, range of motion, posture and balance can all improve.4
3. Reducing body fat percentage
In conjunction with a healthy, balanced diet and cardio exercise, strength training can reduce your body fat content. High-intensity F45 strength classes allow you to burn calories both during and after your workout. One of the additional strength training health benefits is that it may increase your metabolic rate, which measures how many calories your body uses for breathing, circulation, digestion and keeping your cells running.5
A higher metabolic rate activates post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), a process that utilises oxygen to help burn fat – giving you that afterburn effect.6 To combine the effects of cardio and resistance training, consider our fan-favourite Hybrid workout which blends cardio and resistance training to increase strength and endurance, and kickstart your metabolism.
4. Improving sleep quality and wellbeing
Strength classes have also been known to regulate sleep, helping to ease some of the muscle aches than can be disruptive to healthy rest. In turn, this reduces fatigue throughout the day, allowing you to work out and perform physical tasks as normal. Stress can also be a major sleep inhibitor, but physical exercise works to boost the body’s serotonin levels to improve our mood and decrease stress levels. Ensure that you don’t perform any high-intensity workouts too close to bed (at least 90 minutes) so that you can reap the benefits.
Now that you’ve unlocked the benefits resistance training has to offer, explore how to build and maintain muscle mass.
1 Better Health Channel. “Resistance Training – Health Benefits.” Better Health Channel, 11 July 2022, www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/resistance-training-health-benefits.
2 Demontiero, Oddom, et al. “Aging and Bone Loss: New Insights for the Clinician.” Therapeutic Advances in Musculoskeletal Disease, vol. 4, no. 2, Apr. 2012, pp. 61–76, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383520/, https://doi.org/10.1177/1759720×11430858.
3 Zhang, Sarah. “Ozempic Makes You Lose More than Fat.” The Atlantic, 2 Feb. 2024, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/02/ozempics-muscle-loss-problem/677326/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024
4 “How Does Lifting Weight Impact Your Joints.” Www.gomberamd.com, www.gomberamd.com/blog/how-does-lifting-weight-impact-your-joints-21917.html.
5 Better Health Channel. “Metabolism.” Better Health Channel, 2012, www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/metabolism.
6 Lecovin, Geoff. “(EPOC) Exploring Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption.” Blog.nasm.org, 2022, blog.nasm.org/excess-post-exercise-oxygen-consumption.
