Exercise is good for you no matter how much you dislike it. There’s no getting around the fact that a lot of exercise is unpleasant. If you’re doing it right, your muscles will have aches by the time you’re done and you’ll likely have broken out in a sweat. Few people actually enjoy this, but you need to hit a certain threshold to get much out of exercise. There are a couple of forms of exercise that people want to consider to make the most of their health: aerobic exercise and strength training. Each offers particular benefits and requires separate exercises. Aerobic exercise is generally a bit easier for anyone to get in because all it takes is going for a jog. Strength training requires more dedication and a space for it. It is more common for men to engage in it, but women or others with higher estrogen levels should definitely consider weight training as well for a number of reasons.

It Helps You Manage Weight
Strength training is good for your muscles. This is particularly important when it comes to helping manage your weight as your overall muscle mass is related to your metabolism. More muscle tends to result in more calories being burned. Lean muscle, in particular, is associated with helping maintain your weight. This makes strength training alongside diet changes being one of the best ways to actually lose weight and keep it off. Your body will actually get rid of the fat and replace with muscle mass that helps keep the weight off. This is important as we age as muscle mass is gradually lost. It gets replaced by fat and as a result, we tend to gain weight readily with age. A healthy strength training routine will help reduce this effect and keep your body in shape. This benefit has more than one purpose as well when it comes to helping you age gracefully.

It Maintains Muscle Mass
Everyone loses muscle mass as they age, but high estrogen levels make it harder to maintain muscle mass. This is why women and other with higher estrogen levels tend not to develop highly noticeable musculature. The downside to this is that it means muscle mass is lost even faster when aging. Strength training helps to counteract this by both adding more muscle mass and maintaining what is there. This keeps the body active and healthy. Greater muscle mass tends to result in more available energy for doing things as well as helping maintain mobility and the ability to live independently with age. You don’t need to have been doing strength training your whole life to gain these benefits, but when you hit 40 it becomes highly advisable to start taking up some form of strength training specifically for these reasons.

It Improves Your Overall Health
Maintaining your muscle mass with strength training is necessary for your overall health as you age. Keeping your weight low and keeping you capable of maintaining independent movement with advanced age are just two of the benefits. The better health feeds back into all aspects of your body. It reduces the potential for cardiovascular disease as well as several other age-related diseases. Interestingly enough, some studies indicate this actually helps maintain mental function as well. The speculation is that maintaining a varied routine keeps your mind active along with encouraging better blood flow across your body. The end result? Better long term health results that maintain quality of life for longer than those who didn’t put in the effort to do a little strength training. It is hard to argue with those results.

Strength training is important for everyone, but women and others with high estrogen levels will want to particularly consider engaging in it. Don’t worry about developing highly visible muscle mass as that is difficult due to estrogen levels. The strength training will help counter many age related issues and help you lead a healthier life for longer. Not to mention there is a bit of smug satisfaction to being just that much stronger than people expect. After all, who doesn’t like surprising people sometimes?