Cardiovascular training is an important element of cardiorespiratory fitness, but also to maintain or improve health, by helping with factors such as lowering blood pressure, boosting mood and improving insulin sensitivity. But if there’s an area that only in recent years has started to gain more in popularity when it comes to women and exercising, is strength training. 

There are numerous benefits from strength training, from improved strength (obviously), to better mobility, it can improve mood and confidence, also of particular importance in women strength training helps to keep the skeleton strong. It is estimated that almost 3 million people in the UK have osteoporosis with more than 300,000 fractures occurring each year related to osteoporosis. With the decline of hormones (particularly Oestrogen) as women age, bone health becomes something women certainly need to consider. 1 in 2 women compared to 1 in 5 men over 50 years of age will break a bone every year. Just 6 months of heavy resistance training (in premenopausal women) has been shown to improve bone mineral density in certain areas[1]. Strength training can also help postmenopausal women to maintain bone mineral density[2]. 

Resistance training has been shown to be good for mental health[3], helping to reduce depression symptoms in both men and women.

Strength training that is done on a regular basis has shown to reduce the risk of a heart attack, or death related to heart disease by 40 – 70% compared to individuals that did no strength training[4].

Another factor to be mindful of is sarcopenia, sarcopenia is age related muscle loss, something both women and men would benefit from working to mitigate. Muscle not only has benefits on factors such as performance, and appearance but again can have hugely positive impacts on your health. Muscle building and strength are long term pursuits that help to build strength, independence and resilience over time. Besides, who doesn’t like the feeling of being strong?

So I think we can pretty safely conclude that strength training is something everyone should be doing, far beyond just aesthetic purposes, but also performance, and importantly our short and long term health. 

Within our SGPT sessions here at The Fitness Collective HQ we put a primary focus on the strength elements of these sessions, providing support and coaching to ensure our members are progressing safely with their main lifts and building their strength over time. We then have some mobility and metabolic work for good measure, and an all round effective workout. 

[1] PMID: 9509822

[2] https://doi.org/10.1002/jbmr.3284