Actually, not a whole lot.
Strength training is usually accomplished by means of some form of resistance training. One of the more common forms of resistance training is weight training.
Okay! All done here!
Well maybe a little more explanation...
When you exercise, you can actually choose from a wide range of exercise methods and exercise goals. The methods and the goals don't always match.
For example, as commonly done, weight training is great for building strength, as is resistance training done without weights (more on that later). However, training for strength is not very good for improving cardiovascular health.
On the other hand, as you have probably guessed, training for cardiovascular health usually doesn't build a whole lot of strength.
For optimum health at any age, you should actually be training for strength, cardiovascular health...and flexibility.
But, back to the topic.
Training a muscle against resistance causes it to gain in strength. You can use free weights, weight training, to accomplish this. In this case, the weight of the object is the "resistance" which builds strength as you move it through various weight training routines.
However, in the last few decades, various other types of resistance exercise machines and equipment, ranging from exercise bands to high tech, and sometimes very expensive, all in one exercise machines, have evolved.
If you have ever seen a commercial for Bowflex or Total Gym, you know what I am talking about.
Many people choose to go with one of the oldest, and cheapest, forms of resistance/strength training...bodyweight exercises. Remember the good old push up?
Each form has its....well, strengths, and weaknesses.
Weight training with free weights means moving some unstable objects through various positions. This exposes you to more possible injuries or accidents. I still remember the day my father was doing bench presses with dumbbels and dropped one on his face, cracking his dentures. Also, because of their nature, and the nature of the human body, free weights don't always put the resistance in the right position. In fact, there are a large number of specialized pieces of equipment which try to correct this.
On the other hand, free weights are relatively inexpensive, easily stored out of the way, and can add to a full body experience which also can work core muscles a bit more than certain pieces of exercise equpment.
Resistance exercise machines can often better isolate specific muscles or muscle groups than free weights. They can also sometimes enforce proper body position and range of motion for specific exercises. An additional benefit is, since you are not actually "lifting" a weight, you can do certain exercises that free weights might not allow or would hinder.
For example, many of these exercise machines will allow a leg press and an exerciser can use a lighter weight or place less stress on joints. This can be important to someone with a knee problem, for example. Also, continuing with the legs, it is terribly difficult to exercise the backs of the legs with free weights, but many exercise machines are excellent for this type of exercise.
However, exercise machines also have their drawbacks. Performing some exercises on machines sometimes results in a restricted range of motion. Also, good all in one exercise machines can be big and expensive. While free weights generally can fit into a small space (I recommend at least a small bench as well), many exercise machines take up a lot of space.
Bodyweight exercises have been around for a long time (probably some caveman did push ups to impress his cave girl). While they are the cheapest of all (unless you break something and have to pay a doctor) and can be done almost anywhere, you are restricted by having to move your own bodyweight. Someone who is overweight and out of shape could have a lot of trouble doing push ups while they could possibly do bench presses or similar movements with free weights or on an exercise machine.
On the other hand, a very positive issue with bodyweight exercises is that, when a full routine is done properly and regularly, it is possible to build a highly functional body which can often do a lot of things that the bodybuiler or weight lifter cannot. Someone who trains with bodyweight exercises often looks a lot like a muscular gymnast and can work like a lumberjack.
A drawback I have found is that there do not seem to be many instructional resources for teaching a broad range of strength-building bodyweight exercises. What if you want to do push ups or chin-ups and don't have a lot of arm strength? Well, for the push up, you could start with push ups against a wall and gradually work your way down to the more traditional position...what my drill sergeants laughingly called "the front leaning rest".
However, there are a few out there. The following are easily downloadable, for a fee of course, and can help you get started on bodyweight exercises:
No Equipment - No Excuses from Wild Geese Martial Arts. It's priced in Euros, but costs about $20 for instant download.
The Bodyweight Blitz by Brian and Shawn Fitzmaurice. It also costs about $20 to download.
Bodyweight Blast X which bills itself as "the ultimate bodyweight training program. This one goes for about $47 at this time.
If you really want to hit the big time in the world of bodyweight training, however, you need to check out The TACFIT Commando Program Designed for, and used by, real life special ops types, the entire TACFIT Commando program is bodyweight-only and can be completed in about the same amount of space you’d need to lie down in. It only takes 20 minutes, but it is packed with an intensity and fat melting power most athletes don’t even tap in a full hour of training — because real-world tactical operators don’t have time to piss around. Pricey at about $140 dollars, but, if you want to participate in "black ops" you need it!
Hope this was of benefit to you
Are You Ready to Be 'Old'?
I didn't write the following. In fact, I don't know who did. I found it among a collection of articles in my archives. It apparently has been sold and given away for many people to use. I include it here for your edification.
PREPARING FOR OLD AGE.
Socrates was once asked this question: "What kind of people shall we be when we reach Elysium?"
His answer was as simple, yet as deep, as the question: "We shall be the same kind of people that we were here."
Many believe in a life after this one. Many are not sure there is. One thing is sure. If there is a life after this, we are preparing for it now, and you and I are preparing today for life tomorrow...on this mortal plane.
What kind of a person shall I be tomorrow?
Probably, for most of us at least, pretty much the same kind of person that I am now. The kind of person that I shall be next month depends upon the kind of person that I have been this month.
If I am miserable today, probably due to some choice, or choices, or mine, it is not within the round of probabilities that I shall be supremely happy tomorrow. Heaven is a habit, at least here on earth. And if we are going to Heaven at some later date, maybe we would be better off getting used to it now!
Life is a preparation for the future, although we cannot be sure what future, and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.
Sound strange?
Well we are preparing all the time for old age. Two things that make old age beautiful are resignation and a just consideration for the rights of others.
In the play, "Ivan the Terrible", the interest centers around one man, the Czar Ivan. If anybody but Richard Mansfield played the part, there would be nothing in it. We simply get a glimpse into the life of a tyrant who has run the full gamut of goosedom, grumpiness, selfishness and grouch.
Incidentally this man had the power to put other men to death, and this he has done as whim and temper might dictate. He has been vindictive, cruel, quarrelsome, tyrannical and terrible. Now that he, in the play, feels the approach of death, he hopes to make his peace with God.
But, he has delayed that matter too long. He didn't realize in youth and middle life that he was then preparing for old age.
Preparing for it and creating it.
A person's life is the result of cause and effect, and the causes reside, to a degree, in our hands.
Life is a fluid thing, and well has it been called the "stream of life" We are always going, flowing somewhere.
Strip Ivan of his robes and crown, and he might be an old farmer and live in Ebenezer. Every town and village has its own Ivan. To become a local Ivan, just turn your temper loose and practice cruelty on any person or thing within your reach, and the result will be a sure preparation for a querulous, quarrelsome, pickety, snippity, fussy and foolish old age...one accented with many outbursts of wrath that are terrible in their futility and ineffectiveness.
Babyhood has no monopoly on the tantrum, after all.
The characters of King Lear and Ivan the Terrible have much in common. One might almost believe that the writer of Ivan had felt the incompleteness of Lear, and had seen the absurdity of making a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf of this old man thrust out by his daughters.
Lear, the troublesome, Lear to whose limber tongue there was constantly leaping words unprintable and names of tar, deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been training his three daughters for exactly the treatment he was to receive from them in the future he had built.
All his life Lear had been lubricating the chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black midnight storm.
"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child," he cries to none who will listen.
There is something that is quite as bad as a thankless child, and that is a thankless parent an irate, irascible parent who possesses an underground vocabulary and a disposition to use it.
The false note in the story of the life of Lear lies in Shakespeare having given him a daughter like Cordelia.
Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and Ivan the Terrible is what he is without apology, excuse or explanation. Take it or leave it if you do not like plays of this kind, agitate to bring back Vaudeville.
Mansfield's Ivan is terrible.
The Czar is not old in years, being not over seventy, but you can see that Death is sniffing close upon his track. Ivan has lost the power of repose. He cannot listen, weigh and decide he has no thought or consideration for any man or thing this is his habit of life. His bony hands are never still the fingers open and shut, and pick at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast, adjusts his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's tattoo, gets up nervously and looks behind the throne, holds his breath to listen.
When people address him, he damns them savagely if they kneel, and if they stand upright he accuses them of lack of respect. He asks that he be relieved from the cares of state, and then trembles for fear his people will take him at his word. When asked to remain ruler of Russia he proceeds to curse his councilors and accuses them of loading him with burdens that they themselves would not endeavor to bear.
He is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield took one step more his realism would be appalling, but he stops in time and suggests what he dares not express. This tottering, doddering, slobbering, sniffling old man is in love, and he is about to wed a young, beautiful girl. He selects jewels for her he makes remarks about what would become her beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked falsetto. In the animality of youth there is something pleasing it is natural but the vices of an old man, when they have become only mental, are most revolting.
The people about Ivan are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute monarch he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with thumping hearts.
He is intensely religious and affects the robe and cowl of a priest. Around his neck hangs the crucifix. His fear is that he will die with no opportunity of confession and absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers to God and curses on man in the same breath.
If any one is talking to him he looks the other way, slips down until his shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his leg, and keeps up a running comment of insult "Aye," "Oh," "Of course," "Certainly," "Ugh," "Listen to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting.
Glimpses of Ivan's past are given in his jerky confessions he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he is reaping as he has sown.
All his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has been a preparation for the next. Ivan dies in a fit of wrath, hurling curses on his family and court dies in a fit of wrath into which he has been purposely taunted by a man who knows that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened monarch.
Where does Ivan the Terrible go when Death closes his eyes?
I don't know, and neither do you.
But this I believe.
No confessional can absolve him no priest benefit him no God forgive him. He has damned himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting ready for the fifth act.
The playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so, but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison wrath is a toxin sensuality leads to death clutching selfishness is a lighting of the fires of hell. It is all a preparation cause and effect.
If you are ever absolved, you must absolve yourself, for no one else can. And the sooner you begin, the better.
We often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old age that is beautiful is the one the man has long been preparing for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us are right now preparing for old age.
There may be a substitute somewhere in the world for Good Nature, but I do not know where it can be found.
Perhaps the real secret of salvation is this: Keep Sweet.
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