Detailing Your Car: Weight Training and Your Bones
Physical activity places stress on bones because muscles tug on them. This stimulates modeling and remodeling, meaning the bones develop stronger and with more density. Weight bearing exercises promote blood flow, causing more oxygen and nutrients to go to your bones. Thus, an active lifestyle promotes bone growth, modeling, and remodeling for stronger bones more than an inactive lifestyle.
Weight Training and Your Bones
Have you ever worked out with weights, stretch bands, or even your own body weight by doing exercises like push-ups and pull-ups? If so, you were doing resistance training. Resistance is the weight or force opposing your muscles. Resistance training can improve the density and strength of your bones.
Opposing Muscles
Sets of muscles that work together to help you move your body are called opposing muscles. You may have a tendency to use your stronger muscles more frequently than your weaker muscles. For example, you likely lift object with your biceps, because they are a primary mover, but do not do very much with your triceps. Primary muscle movers are often called agonist. In contrast, muscles that oppose the actions of another muscle are called antagonist. For example, an antagonist may relax while another muscle contracts, resulting in a smooth movement. To help prevent injuries, it is important to strengthen muscles that are weaker rather than only using your dominant muscles.
When you are doing any weight-bearing (resistance) activity, muscle pulls on bone and wakes it up by increasing blood flow. When blood flow increases to the bone, osteoblasts begin to work extra hard. Osteoblasts are the building blocks of bone. When they produce more bone, bone density increases, giving your body a stronger support structure.
It is important to learn proper resistance training. Therefore, for the application in this topic, you will do weight training. For now, take a moment to preview your workout, and learn the types of exercises you will perform. Pay close attention to the pictures. They will help you with the strength-training exercises. It may also benefit you to take the time to search the Internet for more images or videos to support your resistance training. Click the player button to begin.
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Repetition and Sets
As you learn proper resistance training, be sure you incorporate the use of repetition and sets.
Repetition: A complete movement through the exercise. For example, a biceps curl repetition starts with full extension at the elbow, then it performs flexion, and returns to full extension.
Set: A group of consecutive exercises. If you perform biceps curls ten times and stop, that is a set. The number of sets you do of a particular exercise depends on your goals, level of intensity, and number of repetitions. It is normally recommended not to exceed three sets, but rather increase your reps and/or weight used for the exercise.
Between sets, you will need to rest before moving onto another set of exercises. Follow the workout plan in knowing how much rest, if any, to take between exercises. You can choose either to use dumbbells, barbells, or some other resistance equipment.
Weight Training and Your Bones Review
Now that you have learned about the ways resistance training strengthens your bones, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Click the player button to get started.