Use Your Muscles or Lose Them!

If you don't build muscles, you will lose muscles. It doesn't matter if you're 40 years old or 75 years old.

Exercise and fitness will help you to increase the range of movement, increase lean muscle, strengthen bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, improve your ability to do everyday activities, improve health, help prevent accidents, injuries, and sickness, and speed up rehabilitation.

Resistance training helps women tone, shape and strengthen muscle fibers, minimizing the "fatty marbling" within the muscle that results in flabby, weak muscles. In addition, not only will you increase lean muscle mass and overall body tone, but the benefits of exercise also include increased metabolic rate and increased bone density.

Women who exercise on a regular basis with both resistance training (weight lifting) and cardiovascular exercise are able to perform more work without tiring and are less likely to sustain fractures resulting from osteoporotic conditions.

So, what happens when the body you once knew begins to acquire a different shape and doesn't respond to activities and physical exertion as it once did when you were 20 years old? Unfortunately, you can't change the fact that you'll age, but you can control, to some degree, the rate at which you age. A lot of women unwisely decrease their activity level as they grow older, assuming it's proper to grow old gracefully.

Regrettably, they grow old ungracefully, with considerable restrictions on their mobility, self-reliance, and quality of life. From adulthood into middle age, you will lose approximately 6.6 pounds of lean muscle mass during each decade of life. Numerous studies indicate that muscle mass may decline by 20% to 40% between age 20 and age 65. So, it is critical to continue a regular strength training program throughout your life.

Be sure and download your Free Bodyweight 500 Metabolic Fat Burner Workouts and start shaping your body faster!

Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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