5 Reasons Lifting Heavy is Your Secret to Staying Young and Fit

We all want to stay fit and feel young. If the fountain of youth existed, we would still need to maintain our bodies, and what's the best way to do this for the rest of our lives? The answer is simple: lift heavy shit.

Every single person who wants to look better at the pool, on the beach, or naked in the mirror is trying to manipulate these two systems:

• Inside Mass = muscle / lean body mass

• Outside Mass = body fat

What most people neglect to realize is that your inner mass (your muscles) grow slowly and can only really be revealed with the right amount of fat loss. We need to do two things to achieve the body composition we're looking for. Your calorie intake determines how much fat you lose or gain, and your workout routine determines how much muscle you build on your frame.

Lifting heavy is the easiest, most efficient way to build muscle. Compound lifts are full-body exercises that do everything you need to do in less time. This is the bread and butter of Lazy Gains Club. Many prominent fitness coaches are starting to catch on. See Jeff Nippard's recent discovery of how he maintains his physique with less volume (fewer sets, exercises, and days in the gym) and still gains or maintains as much as he did with much more volume.

So what's the secret to looking and feeling better? After 14 years of experience, training with a professional online trainer myself, and experimenting with how much or little I can do to still make gains, I've compiled a list of aspects that show how heavy lifting affects your body and quality of life the most.

1. Raise Your Metabolism

The more muscle mass you carry, the more calories you burn; even in your sleep. Your metabolism naturally drops over time, but having more muscle slows that decline, helping you stay leaner and stronger with less effort. Think of your muscle mass like a fuel-burning engine; the more you have, the more you burn. The more muscle you have, the more calories you can consume. And who doesn't want to eat more food?

Raising your metabolism:

• Makes fat loss easier

• Gives you more food flexibility

• Helps keep weight off long-term

• Supports better energy levels

2. Strengthen Your Skeletal Frame

It's no secret that your bones are important; they hold everything in place, protect your organs, make red and white blood cells and platelets, regulate blood sugar, energy, and hormones, and obviously help move you from point A to point B. If your muscles shrink (which they will if you don't strengthen them), the bones lose that stimulus and can start thinning. You're telling your body that you don't need to carry that much weight, even if you do.

One of the biggest risks as you age is breaking a bone and osteoporosis (especially for women). Postmenopausal women are at especially high risk, mainly because of their decline in estrogen. Several scientific studies estimate 1 in 3 women over age 50 will experience a fracture related to osteoporosis in their lifetime. That's a lot! Research that’s indexed in PubMed and other peer-reviewed medical literature shows that low bone density in older adults is linked not only to an increased risk of breaking bones but also to a higher risk of death later on, especially after major fractures like hip breaks.

The bone loss cycle:

• Bone density drops

• Fracture risk rises

• Recovery from falls gets harder

• Loss of strength leads to less movement

• Less movement leads to even weaker bones

3. Sharpen the Mind

Your muscles are not only good for your body, but they're also good for your brain health. Resistance training and cardio increase a growth factor called Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF).

BDNF helps:

• grow new neurons

• strengthen connections between brain cells

• improve learning and memory

Your Hippocampus handles memory and is one of the first areas to shrink with aging. Lifting heavy loads elicits a stronger systemic stress response than light movements. You are literally training your brain to stay sharp while training your body to stay strong.

Getting fit is also largely a mental game. Your mood, hormones, stress responses, and overall attitude toward fitness greatly impact your ability to just get to the gym, let alone lift something 2x your weight. At the end of the day, it's all math, and the math doesn't lie. As long as you're following the right steps and listening to your body with your warm-ups, your body may surprise you with how much it can do. It's surprised us many times. Your thoughts are what you have to conquer.

4. Functional Strength

When it comes to your daily movements, walking up and down stairs, lifting a heavy box above your head, carrying your 5-year-old who refuses to use his legs halfway through a family stroll through the park, functional strength is how easily you can get through these tasks. With compound movements (deadlift, squat, chin-ups, etc.) the Big 5 covers every part of your body to make these tasks easy-breezy.

The reason we lift heavy is that we want to look fit and lean, but another reason we love it is that it has made every aspect of our lives easier. We have more energy, more time to do whatever we want, and are better able to handle arduous tasks like moving, hiking long distances, or an insane class your friend drags you to, like hot yoga. It all overlaps.

Functional strength looks like:

• carrying groceries without your back screaming

• lifting a suitcase into overhead storage

• pulling your mom up a hill when they're too tired to keep going (true story)

• standing up easily without groaning

  
  

Those are all squat, hinge, push, pull, and carry patterns; heavy compound lifts do all this.

5. A Stronger Heart

Heavy lifting is the same as doing cardio, but better. This is why we don't run; it's unnecessary and can actually be detrimental to your progress (keep your heart rate below 138 in order to not impede muscle growth - this is typically a fast-paced walk). Your muscles need a lot of recovery time when you're lifting heavy weights, which is another benefit. If your cardiovascular system is weak, everything suffers.

Poor cardiovascular health is one of the biggest risk factors for:

• heart disease (men's number 1 killer)

• stroke

• metabolic disease

• cognitive decline

Lifting heavy challenges your heart more than most people realize. These short bursts force you to expand your lungs to full capacity, the same way cardio does. It raises your heart rate, forcing it to pump more forcefully and demand more oxygen.

A daily walk is great to get your blood flowing and your heart rate up. We often go for a mile-long walk around the park; no running needed, thank the good lord. Three sets of squats with a barbell on your shoulders will have you breathing hard like you just sprinted for the bus and make you wish you hadn't waited so long between sessions. Hello sore thighs in two days!

Remember how I said everything overlaps? I'm reminded of this story my dad likes to tell. At the beginning of his senior year of high school, my Dad's friend told him, "Before every single rep, take in as much air as possible." After one year of heavy lifting three times a week, he one day just decided to try and match the school's underwater swimming record in its Olympic-sized pool in Spokane, Washington, by swimming two laps completely underwater. He achieved this with his first attempt. Just from weightlifting alone, he kept up with the previous school's record holder!

Lifting has improved every aspect of our lives and will continue to improve them well into old age.

I hope some of these things resonate with you, as each one of these may be just as important as the beach bod we initially strive to achieve. It's not just about looking like Brad Pitt in the movie Troy; there are so many, many more ways our bodies can enjoy the benefits, and our longevity can be extended by many years.

Good luck, and let's go get it! But none of this rise n' grind as you drag your body to another horrendous CrossFit class at 4:30 am. You've got a life to live and enjoy, and a long one at that.