What is the best way to lose weight and increase your strength over 50?
Well, it’s with strength training.
And while you may have read all of the amazing healthy benefits strength training can give you over 50, did you know an upper body strength workout has it’s very own special set of benefits that are often lesser known?
Here are 4 science backed fun benefits that only an upper body strength workout can provide:
And when you’re done reading,and feeling motivated, jump right into your upper body strength workout above!
1.Burn More Fat With a Strength Workout:
You may have heard that exercise for weight loss is insignificant. It matters more what you eat.
This is not true, especially over 50.
While you have to focus on healthy nutrition in order to to achieve healthy weight loss, you’ve also got to workout. More importantly, you’ve got to lift weights.
Over 50, when lean muscle decline accelerates, strength training becomes a powerful tool to boost your fat burning potential, and increase your metabolic rate.
While cardio is great for the heart, it’s strength training that enhances lean muscle, speeding up your metabolism not only during a workout, but for hours after you’re done.
2. It improves hand strength, a predictor of how healthy you are:
You read correctly! A strong hand grip is correlated with a strong heart
Not to mention your ability to fight certain cancers, type II diabetes, and respiratory diseases such as COPD.
It can also predict the rate you age. A stronger hand grip shows you’re aging slower than someone of the same age whose grip is weaker.
So, what’s a great way to work hand grip?
You guessed it, an upper body strength workout. After all, you’re literally gripping a heavy weight and demanding your grip strength hold tight.
If you want to challenge your grip strength further to maximize these amazing health benefits, invest in a pair of affordable “fat grips” .
Fat grips are thick rubber pieces that slip around your weight.
They add thickness to your dumbbell handle, challenging you to grip wider, which increases your grip strength while creating a fun new workout challenge.
Side Note: I am not affiliated with this product, I’m recommending it only because “fat grips” are a fun way to work grip strength.
3. You can give your knees a break:
Often when an injury occurs in the lower body, the first thought is to stop working out, but over 50, more than ever, those strength training workouts make a huge difference to your fitness and weight loss progress.
As you’ve already learned in point number one, these workouts increase the amount of lean muscle you have in your body.
Since lean muscle is what’s in charge of burning calories and boosting your metabolism, the name of the game is to keep those strength workouts consistent. (Something that can easily get derailed with a lower body injury).
But, there’s good news:
You don’t need knees to have a great workout.
When arthritis flares up, a tight muscle hurts the knee, or too much impact has made your lower body sore, do a quality upper body strength workout instead.
You’ll maintain your metabolic burn, not to mention you’ll firm and tone your arms, abs and tummy.
It’s a win, win all around.
4. You won’t have to ask for help to open your pickle jar:
Besides being phenomenal for grip strength, an upper body workout is a predictor of future independence, and your ability to ward off injury.
That means that throughout life, you won’t need to ask your significant other to open that pickle jar for you. It’s all you!
The important part to remember with an upper body strength workout (actually with any workout you endeavour) is to ensure you’re doing each exercise in full range of motion.
Your muscles only get strong in the range that you work them, so take your time with each exercise and to make sure you work as many muscles as possible.
So, now that you know all of the amazing benefits upper body workouts provide, it’s time to take action!
Click on the upper body strength workout above and let’s workout