Resistance rewards

Resistance training is simple and can be used as an aid to help tackle all sorts of health issues.

It has been shown to significantly help those suffering from arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, chronic back pain, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s and chronic hypertension.

If carried out correctly it can help people of all ages and from all walks of life, basically the science says that everyone should do some form of resistance training.

Now there are basically four movements that people should work on when doing this training:
* Squat
* Hinge
* Upper body push
* Upper body pull

Firstly you have the squat, this movement works the lower body by bending at the knees, squats are known (and hated) by most people as they are incredibly effective and are probably the exercise that will get you the most bang-for-your-buck. People can, and have gotten decent results from simply just squatting.

Next, we have a hinge, which also works the lower body, this time from bending mostly at the hips, good hinge movements include deadlifts and kettlebell swings, I’d say this is the movement that most people miss in their training and why many people have lower back issues.

Then we have the upper body push, working the muscles in the front of the upper body (chest and shoulders) and the upper body pull, working the muscles in the back of the upper body. Both of these movements are easily identified and also work the arms. Pushes include push-up variations, and any ‘pressing’ movement, whilst pulls include pull-up variations and any ‘pulling’ or ‘rowing’ movements.

So let’s make a programme out of all of this - simply pick one variation of each of these movements and do them three times a week, go relatively heavy and try to progress the weights week-by-week.

There’s no need to get over-complicated with stuff … stay motivated and keep at it and in no time you will be healthier and get some fantastic results.