6 Reasons to Build Muscle

You hear it from EVERYONE in the industry don’t you?  Jen Sinkler says for cardio she likes to lift weights faster. Mark Sisson speaks out against chronic cardio all the time.  But then you see pics of your favorite fitness models on Instagram with the calories they burned on their heart rate monitors or they tweet about their latest hour on the stepmill.

WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO?!

I cannot say specifically to you, what you should be doing to reach your goals because every person, every body, every personal fitness goal is completely different, which is why I recommend you sign up for online training so I can create a custom plan for you.  But instead I will give you my top six benefits you will see from focusing on building muscle.

1. If you want to see lean muscle tone, you have to have muscle.  I go into it further in this blog, but think about it, if you want to be better at speaking Spanish, you have to study Spanish. If you want to be darker, you have to layout more to get a tan. If you want to have delts that pop you have to build those delts by lifting weights.

2. The more muscle you have on your body, the more you can get away with in the kitchen.  The more muscle mass you have on your body, the higher your BMR will be because your metabolism is higher.  Those muscles need fuel so you actually need to eat more.  That includes yummy foods like ahi tuna, steak, meatzza, bananas, almond butter, sweet potatoes in coconut oil… YUM!  Not to mention, when you workout your muscles use up their glycogen stores and you need to replace those. Before you workout, you need natural pre workouts to retain the energy.  After a tough lift real sugar is a great way to replace those stores and to be honest, my favorite thing to eat is Cinnamon Toast Crunch.. with protein of course.

3. It makes you feel awesome. For years I trained for physique based goals. Being a girl, I never felt satisfied with my body, thus I was never satisfied with my results, no matter how hard I worked and perfectly I ate.  When I started lifting for real and training at a Crossfit gym, I became way more interested in hitting PR’s. When you start training to increase your 1 rep max back squat or bench press you have other things to consume your mind and get excited about.  You see real, measurable pay off.  If you want to know more about why I recommend using performance based benchmarks, you can read that here.

4. Lifting weights improves your daily life.  It becomes easier to move boxes around your house or at work. Your posture will improve.  You can climb up on your cabinets to reach high objects in your kitchen.  You don’t have to ask for help opening jars.  if your kid falls asleep on the couch you can pick him up and carry him to bed.  Low back problems can go away from lifting.  Getting into yoga poses gets easier. Making it through long distance runs or bike rides gets easier.  Lifting just generally makes life easier.

5. Regular lifting workout programs also increase bone density which reduces risk of osteoporosis.  Also, as we get older our bodies naturally lose muscle mass.  Lifting weights can help prevent that as well.  It reduces risk of injury while you are doing other things because it increases the strength of connective tissue like tendons and the muscles (obvi!)  Have you heard of people coming back from serious accidents faster because of their healthy muscle mass?

6. I almost always write about fat loss, so it wouldn’t be a complete blog if I didn’t mention how it can help with fat loss.  Lifting weight and building lean muscle makes fat loss more sustainable.  If you decide you want to lose weight and do an hour of cardio a day every day for 2 months a few things usually happen. To start, you get bored.  Peddling away on the elliptical is sooooooo boring, I can’t blame you for leaving the gym after 30 minutes or dreading having to go.  If you are a gal who actually enjoys it, is it because you watch tv or read a book?  How effective can your workout really be if you are multi-tasking?  But let’s say you keep doing it and two months go by and you just haven’t gotten results or maybe you have gotten smaller, but are you really seeing muscle tone yet?  Doubtfully.  Go back and read #1 if you want to know why.  Bottom line: adding weight lifting into your workout routines will keep you from getting bored and won’t allow you to become “skinny fat.”

You don’t have to go meathead out in the squat rack.  You don’t have to come up with ideas on your own and banish yourself to the women’s only section because you aren’t sure if you are doing things right.

Let me create a custom plan just for you that way you can feel confident you are doing the right exercises for YOUR body and for YOUR goals.  Sign up here for online personal training.

Or you know what, try this circuit for free:

Squat to overhead dumbbell press x 12
Step up on bench with two arm bicep curls x 10 each leg
Single arm dumbbell row x 10 each arm
Dumbbell chest press x 10
Walking lunges with dumbbell hammer curls x 8 each leg
repeat for 3 total rounds

Do you even lift bro?
Tell me about how lifting weights has improved YOUR life.. comment below!

Your Coach,

Kyra

P.S. Do you need help creating a strength training workout program to help you build muscle?

Sign up for online personal training today –

for just $7 a month you will have daily workouts to help you build lean muscle!