I used to lift weights to lose weight. At my heaviest, I was 185lbs of not a lot of muscle and a whole bunch of fat. I was symptom free and unaware that Ulcerative Colitis was even a thing. My diet consisted of mini-pizzas and chicken fingers and one day I had looked into the mirror and just stared, astonished at the sight of what I’d turned myself into. With the help of a close friend, I got set up with a wicked weights program, some simply instruction, a gym membership, and an iron will to lose weight. It was a successful endeavor and I got down to a normalized 160lbs before I started my martial arts journey. Even through martial arts, my love for weight lifting continued and much to against the advice of my peers, I continued to lift and body build out of sheer enjoyment. Yet, lately I have begun to lift weights again for a completely different reason.
Even when I was first diagnosed with Colitis, I lifted weights quite often. Maybe a little too often but Bruce Lee was my hero. If Bruce Lee could lift 2-3 times a day, I wanted to be able t
o do it, and indeed I did. I followed this until school started for me again and dropped back down to once a day. Eventually, with my employment of two jobs and the onset of a flare of my disease, I stopped completely. My condition worsened and weights soon became a thing of the past.
Now back in those days, I admit my weight lifting addiction was everything to do with vanity. I just wanted to look good. I didn’t care about performance in martial arts, and I definitely didn’t care about all the healthy factors of weight lifting. I had one thing on my mind. Yet, getting sick (and I mean really sick) has this ability to change your perspective. In a sense, it doesn’t have to be illness that does this. Just imagine that in the span of a couple weeks, you could no longer play the sport you love or all that hard-worked muscle you put on vanished. Both of these things happened and I realized very quickly that I was taking for granted all the real benefits of weight lifting. Yet, it wasn’t until recently that I knew exactly how important those effects were both to my athletic ability and to my daily living until a recent class I was in at school. Well, now it’s my turn to pass on this knowledge.
Before I get deep into the three main reasons I lift nowadays, I will preface it by saying that I still struggle with the idea of working out for looks. Everyone wants to look amazing, it’s just some weird inner drive we all have. That’s perfectly okay, and I’m not trying to trash on anyone who goes to the gym simply to build muscle and look fantastic. All I’m getting at here is that there is a whole other side to weightlifting that you are a part of whether you know it or not.
Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to numero uno reason why I have picked the barbell up again. We are going to dive right into this medically and health is the number one reason I have made my return to the weight room. Now, I’m not going to list the millions of health benefits associated with lifting weights. Honestly, I find those lists exhaustive and I always zone out mid-list, so why would I torture everyone else with it. Instead, I want to focus in on some medical benefits that don’t get nearly as publicized. This involves the immune system by way of hormones.
So not to scare anyone not familiar with weight lifting, but lifting actually causes damage to the muscles. Now, don’t worry, you won’t explode from lifting or anything, but picking up something heavy causes micro-tears in the muscle fibers. It is part of the reason why you get sore after you lift. That’s okay though because these micro-tears are great for your health! These tears start a whole cascade of things, which range from a release of a whole bunch of healthy hormones to a beneficial inflammatory response, both of which are of interest to us. The hormones released go by the names of Insulin-like Growth Factors (IGF), testosterone, and Growth Hormone (GH); all of which have a mega-ton of health benefits for your body ranging from fat loss and increased metabolism to increased force potential and immune functioning. Couple this last benefit of increased immune function with the small inflammatory response caused by lifting weights and you get a huge benefit in your immune system. Now, for most healthy people, what this means is a less likely chance of getting nasty colds and flus. But for someone with an autoimmune disease (like yours truly), this can mean a huge benefit in the management of symptoms. This is something I have definitely experienced personally and if this was the only benefit to lifting weights, I would do it strictly for it. When I was lifting heavily (volume wise), I felt absolutely great and almost never got sick. My symptoms were slowly getting better and things in generally were just easy to cope with. Compare this with when I could no longer lift, and it was absolutely the opposite. Symptoms seemed less manageable and I went from being calm and collected to slightly short-fused. I can comfortably say that weight lifting had a huge part to play in management of my disease, and for this alone, I would lift every day.
The benefits don’t stop here. Let’s dive into the realm of just basic living. I say basic because I’m bringing it to day to day activities like walking up the stairs, or carrying the grocery bags in from the car, or even moving your best friend into their new place. All these things can easily be associated with pain and a whole range of nasty feelings. Well, let me introduce you to weight lifting. Weight lifting has the ability to mitigate such nasty feelings. By adopting a weight lifting program and being serious about it, you can strengthen your body so that activities of daily living are actually quite easy. When you can squat 200lbs, walking up the stairs is a piece of cake. How about that deadlift that you recently got to 185lbs? Ya, that sofa doesn’t seem so heavy anymore. Need I digress? Lifting weights makes living life easier, another facet I found I took for granted when I stopped.
Alright, now for the third and final reason I have re-established my presence in the weight room. I consider myself an athlete, and to be a competitive athlete one must be willing to take advantage of every possible chance to improve. Enter the barbell. For those of you who are athletically minded, the advantage you seek on the field or court may be found in the weight room. Of course, one must be careful as the sport must always come first, with the weights being supplementary. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid weights all together. Several studies have found that resistance training is able to increase both sprinting ability and vertical jump results, if you train properly of course. Now, it is not the purpose of this article to guide you guys through the perfect athletic training performance program, I will leave that for later. But what I will let on to is that lifting weights has not only helped my vertical jump personally, but has also helped me gain that little bit of muscle that gives me the edge on the pitch. Regardless of your sport, I can guarantee that the benefits for lifting exist.
And that’s that. Three solid reasons to get into that weight room and start lifting whether you are healthy, have a chronic disease, or already deep into the athletic realm. Now one very important disclaimer, you should always ask your doctor before starting a workout/training program. Now, that we got that warning out of the way, I think it is safe to say that there is no better time to start lifting and training than today. I will leave on one last note and that is, if you are considering working out/training but have no idea where to start, or just want an extra opinion on what you are about to try out, head on over to the contact page and toss me an email. I am always more than happy to help in any way I can to get people more active and guide them to safe practices.