How Weightlifting Enhances your Mind

Weightlifting Helps you Feel Good Physically and Mentally

Weightlifting is a great way to get in shape and feel good about yourself. It can help you lose weight, increase your energy levels, build muscle, and improve your mood.

Weightlifting is an effective way to burn calories because it increases your metabolism for several hours after you exercise. When you burn calories during exercise, this increases the amount of energy produced by your body. This will keep you feeling energized throughout the day!

Weightlifting Keeps your Brain Sharp

Weightlifting is a great way to keep your brain sharp and prevent cognitive decline. Don’t forget exercise begins with the brain’s demand to contract muscles. This source is also the first to improve before any muscle growth is noticed.

A UK study tested macaque monkeys’ strength training with rest weeks to identify noticeable brain differences. The conclusion found strength exercise fortifies the neural system. This adaptation is developed by enhanced brain-to-muscle input. The mind-to-muscle connection isn’t just a weightlifting motto.

It’s been shown to help prevent brain shrinkage, which can lead to anxiety, depression, dementia and ADHD. Weight lifting also helps reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by keeping your blood flowing smoothly throughout the body.

Physical activity can even improve memory recall and concentration skills over time! Women with mild cognitive impairment lifted weights in comparison to others stretching. After performing this routine for a year, the weight training group scored higher on memory and reasoning tests in contrast to the 12 months prior. Workout for the body and the mind!

The more weight you lift, the longer you can remember things. Researchers found that when people lifted weights, they were able to remember a list of words for a longer period of time than those who didn’t. In fact, lifting weights helped increase participants’ long-term memory by 10 percent.

In light of this finding, make sure to incorporate strength training into your daily routine (at least once a week). The more muscle mass you build through strength training, the better mental performance you’ll experience (even when it comes to recalling information).

Hormone Release from Strength Training

Endorphins are hormones that your body releases when you exercise. They’re associated with feelings of happiness and euphoria, and have been shown to help with depression, anxiety, insomnia and even addiction.

Insulin-like Growth Factor and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor are two others released which serve the neuromuscular system. These hormones ensure proper communication between the brain and muscles.

Angiogenesis and neurogenesis are processes that occur in the body. Angiogenesis expands blood vessels to serve muscle activity. Neurogenesis involves several hormones released by the hippocampus region of the brain. This part of the brain is usually associated with learning and memory. Both processes aid the body during and after exercise mentally and physically.

Weight Workouts Improve your Physical Health

Weight training helps to improve your motor skills, balance and proprioception.

It can also help with:

• Coordination

• Balance

• Proprioception (your ability to know where your body is in space)

• Bone Mineral Density

These can lead to improvements in muscle strength, tone, and endurance. As we age past 20 years, bone loss is reduced with exercise.

When you lift weights, your body is forced to adapt. It will grow stronger as it creates new muscles and allows the existing ones to become more defined.

Lifting weights can help improve your posture by strengthening the muscles that are responsible for keeping your spine straight and tall, rather than letting them get lazy by slouching around all day long. Lifting weights also increases bone density, which may decrease the risk of injury.

Weightlifting also improves balance because when you’re lifting weights, both sides of your body have to work together in order for you to complete a certain exercise properly—and sometimes that involves shifting weight from one side of the body to another in order for an exercise move forward (which requires good balance).

Additionally, strength training helps improve proprioception: this is basically how well our brain knows where all of our limbs are located at any given moment (whether we’re sitting down or standing up) and it’s important because without this ability we wouldn’t be able to move around freely without falling over ourselves all day long!

Lifting Weights Helps your Sleep

When you lift weights, your body is forced to adapt. It will grow stronger as it creates new muscles and allows the existing ones to become more defined. Exercise also helps sleep. Studies have shown that people who exercise regularly are more likely than non-exercisers to feel fatigued at bedtime and fall asleep faster.

Lifting weights can help improve your posture by strengthening the muscles that are responsible for keeping your spine straight and tall, rather than letting them get lazy by slouching around all day long. Lifting weights also increases bone density, which may decrease risk of injury.

Weightlifting also improves balance because when you’re lifting weights, both sides of your body have to work together in order for you to complete a certain exercise properly—and sometimes that involves shifting weight from one side of the body to another in order for an exercise move forward (which requires good balance).

Additionally, strength training helps improve proprioception: this is basically how well our brain knows where all of our limbs are located at any given moment (whether we’re sitting down or standing up) and it’s important because without this ability we wouldn’t be able to move around freely without falling over ourselves all day long!

Lifting Improves your Body and Mind

Strength training has many benefits including improved metabolism, mood and sleep quality; reduced risk of injury; improved cardiovascular health; better immunity. Learn more about the mind and muscle connection throughout https://www.mentesoul.com/.

If you want to improve your health, fitness, and well-being by lifting weights, then you should definitely give it a try. The benefits of weightlifting are so numerous that you’ll quickly start feeling the positive effects on your body and mind. With this kind of workout routine, there’s really no way to go wrong!

Sources:

Herold, F., Törpel, A., Schega, L. et al. Functional and/or structural brain changes in response to resistance exercises and resistance training lead to cognitive improvements – a systematic review. Eur Rev Aging Phys Act 16, 10 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s11556-019-0217-2

Rockwell, R. (2018, December 5). Long Term Effects of Weightlifting on the Brain. Healthfully. https://healthfully.com/535114-carbohydrates-testosterone.html

Bokhari, D. (2022). 7 Life-Changing Benefits of Weight Lifting Everyone Needs To Know. 

Next. MeaningfulHQ.com. https://www.meaningfulhq.com/weight-lifting-benefits.html

McGregor, G. (2021, February 8). How exercise affects the brain. BYU. https://lifesciences.byu.edu/how-exercise-affects-your-brain

Żebrowska A, Hall B, Maszczyk A, Banaś R, Urban J. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, insulin like growth factor-1 and inflammatory cytokine responses to continuous and intermittent exercise in patients with type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2018 Oct;144:126-136. doi: 10.1016/j.diabres.2018.08.018. Epub 2018 Sep 1. PMID: 30179684.

Bloor CM. Angiogenesis during exercise and training. Angiogenesis. 2005;8(3):263-71. doi: 10.1007/s10456-005-9013-x. Epub 2005 Nov 19. PMID: 16328159.

van Praag H. Neurogenesis and exercise: past and future directions. Neuromolecular Med. 2008;10(2):128-40. doi: 10.1007/s12017-008-8028-z. Epub 2008 Feb 20. PMID: 18286389.

Isabel S. Glover, Stuart N. Baker. Cortical, Corticospinal, and Reticulospinal Contributions to Strength Training.

Journal of Neuroscience 22 July 2020, 40 (30) 5820-5832; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1923-19.2020

Harvard Health Publishing. (2017, January 1). Weight training may boost brain power. Harvard Medical School. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/weight-training-may-boost-brain-power

The National Institute of Health. (2018, October). Exercise for Your Bone Health. NIH. https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/bone-health/exercise/exercise-your-bone-health