Muscle Up

Book excerpt: Over the past few decades, mainstream health experts have universally recommended aerobic exercise as a uniquely health-promoting activity. Yet now, Americans are fatter than ever. Aerobic exercise not only has a very poor record at fat loss, it might even cause weight gain. Strength training - also known as weightlifting or resistance training - has much greater power to cause fat loss. What's more, since it builds muscle mass, strength training has huge advantages over aerobic exercise when it comes to improving health. Greater muscle strength means less cancer and heart disease, besides smaller waist size and less body fat. Aerobic exercise, while it can increase cardiovascular fitness, does next to nothing to combat two of the central maladies of aging: sarcopenia (loss of muscle) and osteoporosis. Strength training robustly fights sarcopenia and osteoporosis, and can stop older adults from becoming frail and can keep them out of nursing homes. Whether you're a young and healthy man, a middle-aged woman looking to lose fat, or an elderly person who wants to stay strong and independent, strength training has the most to offer of any exercise. Everyone who exercises should add a strength training component to it. There's simply no other better way to fight obesity, diabetes, cancer, and frailty, and to instill self-confidence and get an attractive body. Muscle Up shows why everyone should train for strength and why aerobic exercise is not optimal. The book surveys the beneficial health effects of strength training, all of it supported by scientific research, with studies cited. You'll also learn how to start a strength training program. There's also a chapter on strength training's cousin, high-intensity interval training (HIT), which can get you in superb physical condition in literally just minutes a week. If you're not getting the results you want from your aerobic exercise, read Muscle Up and see why you should take up strength training. Or you could keep jogging or using the stair-stepper for a few more years and see how that works.