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What is Strength training and why is it important?
Strength work tends to focus on movement quality to improve performance, this can be in any given sport focusing on speed, strength and power, or equally, it could be improving performance in real-life scenarios, such as standing up with ease for elderly clients or rehabilitation from surgery.
Secondly, we focus on:
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Preventing injury
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Developing better movement patterns
In our real-life scenario, this could be an elderly client working on proprioception & balance to help them fall less frequently or to help patients prehabilitation for a major operation thus, in turn, improving their outcome.
It is becoming apparent that the likelihood of the patient returning to a physically and psychologically healthy state is also dependent on what they do in the weeks leading up to the surgery. Scientists have shown that an effective way of increasing the chances of success is to physically train in the time leading up to surgery.
Benefits of Strength work
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Muscular strength
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Bone health
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Improved posture (improving respiratory and cardiovascular mechanics).
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Stabilise our joints and enhance co-ordination and peripheral skills.
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Better mental and physical health.
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Great in combination with other forms of training.
Numerous studies have shown that such exercise increases bone density, which in turn helps offset any age-related natural declines. Any exercise releases serotonin and strength work is no different thus lifting your mood and increasing your confidence.
As you become fitter exercise in itself will become more enjoyable.
With the increase in muscle mass comes the boost in metabolism as muscle burns more calories at rest than fat. More muscle also has other metabolic effects such as the reduction of the risk of insulin resistance, a group of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other factors which can lead to ill health.
In our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, this can only be a positive.
One of the principles of strength and conditioning is to reduce injury but this can also work in reverse to aid a faster recovery after injury or indeed surgery. Since your muscles will be stronger they will be in a better position to adapt and aid recovery.
Our strength coach will be able to identify those areas that are out of use and advise you on how to bring those muscles back to good working order.
The concept of such prehabilitation is based on the idea that patients with a higher functional capacity, or fitness level, will better tolerate a surgical procedure, have fewer post-operative complications and demonstrate better functional, psychological, social and surgical outcomes.