If you frequently read fitness articles and blogs (especially those focused on strength training), you’ll notice that many of them concentrate on the physical benefits (such as strengthening muscles, preventing age-related muscle loss, slowing bone loss) of regular exercise. While exercising is essential for physical fitness, it also helps overall wellness in other ways. Regular physical exercise boosts your immune system, manages and improves diabetes, lowers blood pressure, and so much more. It can also have positive effects on your mental health, too.

Though aerobic exercise has been commonly attributed to reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, recent research has shown that strength training can substantially improve your mood and mental wellbeing.

Below, we’ll discuss some of the many ways you can use strength training to strengthen your mental health, boost your mood and feel better all around.

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Type 2 Diabetes is an impairment in the way the body regulates and uses sugar (glucose) as fuel. Genetics, age, being overweight and inactivity are just a few of the contributing factors to diabetes. Whether you are pre-diabetic, newly diagnosed, or have had diabetes for years, living a healthier lifestyle and incorporating more exercise into your daily routine can help you manage your disease.

So, can strength training help you manage and improve diabetes? The short answer is “Yes!” Here are a few reasons why:

Strength Training Helps with Weight Management

Researchers know that excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle are major contributing factors to diabetes. By maintaining a healthy weight, you can lower your risk factors for diabetes significantly. One study by the Mayo Clinic showed that moderate strength training with an increase in muscle mass can reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 32 percent!

Super Slow strength training has many benefits when it comes to weight management. Strength training works because it helps you to lose fat while increasing lean muscle mass. When you do this, your body burns more calories with less effort, including when you are at rest.

Strength Training Can Help Keep Insulin Levels in Check

Strength training can help manage insulin levels during and after your workouts. With each muscle you engage during your workout, you’re enabling glucose to enter the cells of your muscle to be used for fuel without additional insulin. Strength training also:

• helps your body respond better overall to insulin
• helps improve the way your body uses blood sugar
• can help you lose weight 

Strength Training and the Right Diet

We can’t say it enough—diet and exercise go hand in hand! You could be eating all the right foods and still not seeing the results you want, just like you could be exercising in all the right ways but the foods you are eating prevent you from making progress.

For strength training to be successful, it’s important to feed your body the right combination of protein, carbs and fats. A general guide for fat loss, while still building muscle, is to have a macronutrient diet that is 40 percent protein, 30 percent fat, and 30 percent carbs. There are many ways to approach this, from adjusting the types of foods you eat to looking for healthy alternatives.

All of the certified personal trainers here at Loyalty Fitness are committed to helping you realize the health benefits of strength training, and we want you to be successful with nutrition too! Book a personal training session today and we will help customize a plan that is right for your body’s needs.

One of the first things your doctor checks during regular check-ups is your blood pressure. Have you ever considered why? Blood pressure is exactly what it sounds like – the pressure of your blood pushing against your arteries. Having high blood pressure can contribute to strokes and heart attacks, which is why it’s important to know what your blood pressure is and how you can help control those numbers to keep them in a healthy range.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is measured using a sphygmomanometer (commonly known as a blood pressure cuff) that takes a reading of the Systolic and Diastolic pressure. Systolic, the top number, is the pressure against the arteries when the heart beats. Diastolic pressure, the bottom number, is the pressure against the arteries when the heart is at rest between beats. A normal range for blood pressure is less than 120/80 while anything above 130/80 can be considered high blood pressure.

Regular physical activity can make your heart stronger

The good news is you can reduce your risk of high blood pressure by up to 50% by adding exercise to your daily routine. The American Heart Association recommends 90-150 minutes of exercise per week. This should be a combination of both aerobic exercises, like walking, and strength training. The main way regular exercise helps to lower blood pressure is that it makes your heart stronger which allows it to pump blood through your body with less effort, thus reducing the amount of pressure exerted against your arteries.

Super slow strength training can help you lose weight

Another factor to keep in mind when trying to lower your blood pressure is maintain a healthy weight. When thinking about heart health, the less you weigh the less your heart has to work to pump blood through your system. Even a small weight loss can have a big impact on managing your blood pressure.

Super slow strength training is a great overall approach to exercise! This scientifically proven approach to weightlifting is unique in that it helps to increase aerobic capacity in addition to building muscle strength. As you gain lean muscle, you’re helping to kick start your metabolism which means your body is able to burn more calories when you are at rest. For example when you have more lean muscle on your body you burn more calories just sitting and watching a movie! The great thing about super slow strength training is you can start to see significant improvement in your strength with just two 20-minute training sessions per week. When combined with a nutritious and healthy diet, you are setting yourself up for weight loss success.

Blood pressure decreases right after you workout

Did you know that after you exercise your blood pressure decreases? Post-exercise hypotension, as it’s called, is a normal reaction that can last up to 24 hrs. after exercising. This is mainly due to the fact that exercise helps to increase your blood vessels flexibility. One of the main causes of cardiovascular disease is arterial stiffness, which is why this is so important. The best way to get long lasting effects from post-exercise hypotension is by doing short workout sessions, like we do at Loyalty Fitness.

We take heart health seriously at Loyalty Fitness! We want all our clients to live long and healthy lives and a big part of that is through fitness. Talk to us today to see how super slow strength training with a personal trainer can help you manage your blood pressure. We offer virtual training sessions or in-person training sessions at our Syosset, NY or Greenwich, CT locations.