Hello fellow Crossfitters, Athletes, wonderfully made people,

This post is written with the intent to show the importance and value strength training has on your body.

I usually disagree with some of what the Mayo Clinic releases in their medical literature, however, here is some info from a recent article that I have agreed with.

Use it or lose it

Muscle mass naturally diminishes with age. “If you don’t do anything to replace the lean muscle you lose, you’ll increase the percentage of fat in your body,” says Edward Laskowski, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., and co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center. “But strength training can help you preserve and enhance your muscle mass — at any age.” (Notice the “at any age” part here.)

Strength training also helps you:

1) Develop strong bones. By stressing your bones, strength training increases bone density and reduces the risk of osteoporosis.
2) Control your weight. As you gain muscle, your body gains a bigger “engine” to burn calories more efficiently — which can result in weight loss. The more toned your muscles, the easier it is to control your weight.
3) Reduce your risk of injury. Building muscle helps protect your joints from injury. It also contributes to better balance, which can help you maintain independence as you age.
4) Boost your stamina. As you get stronger, you won’t fatigue as easily.
5) Manage chronic conditions. Strength training can reduce the signs and symptoms of many chronic conditions, including arthritis, back pain, depression, diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis.6) Sharpen your focus. Some research suggests that regular strength training helps improve attention for older adults. – This is because of the amount of neurological breakdown within the muscle tissues when training under heavy loads.

To read the full article from Mayo Clinic click HERE.

I would had a 7th to this list and that is strength is defined as an individuals capacity to apply force by using muscular units or a combination of those muscular units.  So, since strength deals with the application of force and we are, as athletes, wanting to increase our work capacity then our ability to apply force becomes an important component.  We measure our power output by work output over time.  How do we get work output? We measure force times the distance.  So we have to move large loads over long distances.  Hopefully, you are seeing the importance of our ability to apply force (strength) is to our overall fitness and well-being.  ITS HUGE!! Mucho importante!

To conclude, embrace strength training knowing that you are helping burn fat, build capacity to work and burn more calories more efficiently (this is not that important, but just had to appease the calorie watchers out there.) Get excited when we post strength focused WOD’s on the whiteboard knowing of all the great improvements it will lead to.

Strength training alongside you,

Coach Ben

This is not what we are talking about. 🙂