| Throughout
time, medical practitioners, physical therapists and personal
trainers recommend the benefits of strength training and bodybuilding.
But resistance training or weight lifting was not always the work-out,
we have known it to be. If one were to step back in time, the
findings, changes and advancements of bodybuilding would be amazing.
For instance, back
in the late 1800’s, strength training was thought of as an activity
for an individual with super human strength. The fitness program
was not considered for normal folks of the era. In fact, people
were under the misguided conception that bodybuilding would
diminish any athletic stamina. Moreover, the only gents lifting
a barbell or weight were circus strongmen.
At the end of the
great depression, athletes started experimenting with lifting
weights. Then all professional sport teams hired trainers so
that athletes could incorporate weight lifting to enhance their
physical performance in sports.
In the 1980’s the
fallacy that the aging adult could not do anything to prevent
the loss of muscle mass was dispelled. Bodybuilding/strength
training programs became the growing trend in older participants;
however the threat, risk and misnomer the lifting weights in
older people would trigger cardiac complications or injury.
In the late 80s,
Tufts University researchers (in Boston, Massachusetts) tested
the bounds of strength training in study group of volunteers.
Participants were men between the age of 60 and 70 years old.
Volunteers exerted 80 percent of their capacity. These clinical
trials contradicted myths on aging and bodybuilding because
neither injuries nor cardiac episodes were reported over the
twelve weeks period. Over the three month period, volunteers
increase muscles mass by 10 to 12 percent larger and increased
their strength up to 175 percent. |
