A very good reason to get back to the gym for
The Harvard Heart Health Letter just revealed research results which may inspire you to go back to the (home) gym after all.
I will personally get back to swinging my kettle bells on a daily basis for I really need to lose some weight and definitely get back in shape.
Here’s an excerpt of that article:
“Add strength training to your fitness plan
Boosting your muscle mass may trigger changes that enhance heart health.
When you do aerobic exercise—brisk walking, biking, or swimming, for example—you breathe harder and your heart beats faster. This “cardio” workout provides a wealth of cardiovascular benefits. But you might not realize that strength training—also called weight training or resistance training—is also good for your heart.
“Strength training maintains and may even increase muscle mass, which people tend to lose as they age,” says Rania Mekary, a visiting assistant professor of surgery at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at MCPHS University. Boosting your muscle mass speeds up your metabolic rate, so you burn more calories—even when you’re not exercising.
Burning calories and belly fat
Burning more calories helps you avoid weight gain, which keeps your heart healthier than if you pack on pounds. And strength training may be especially important for keeping off belly fat. This so-called visceral fat, which surrounds your internal organs, is particularly dangerous for your heart.
Mekary and colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that healthy men who did 20 minutes of daily weight training had less of an age-related increase in abdominal fat compared with men who spent the same amount of time doing aerobic activities”…
