Our dogma is that general Fitness for Life (as compared with more specific exercise goals) entails a balance of strength-training, calisthenics for muscle-use, agility, balance, and endurance, and some cardio intervals for heart strength and endurance. Plus decent nutrition to support the program goals.
Contrary to some biases and misconceptions, strength training is not mainly for muscle-head gym rats. It's for everybody's fitness if they don't do a manual labor job. It fights the deterioration of age.
Even people whose work entails plenty of lifting can benefit from strength training. If you do not learn the correct ways to exert your body, you can easily injure it or wear it out. Weight training teaches how to move things safely.
There are three basic categories of lifting: Bodybuilding, Powerlifting, Olympic Weightlifting.
Pure Bodybuilding focuses on muscle definition and appearance. Bodybuilding emphasizes individual muscle development over functional groups. General, functional strength training usually needs to include some more isolated muscle groups to work towards larger muscle groups, but does not focus on muscle definition.
Powerlifting is about developing power (defined as strength X speed). The fundamentals are squats, bench, deads, overhead press. Perhaps pull-ups.
Olympic tends to be a more technical sport. It is totally cool, but it's not for me.
General strength fitness training for ordinary people is a hybrid approach borrowing from all three types, but always including Powerlifting (which takes a lot of time with the necessary rest minute between sets). For example, a week's worth of my strength training often includes some sets of most of these: bench, deads, barbell squats, pull-downs, pull-ups, rows, press-downs, dips, curls, overhead press, hamstring curls, inclined bench press, sometimes leg press. Mrs. BD does some Olympic lifts too (amazing to me) but my shoulder can't handle them.
From the article:
Weight Training for Fitness and Health -Most people weight train to improve health, fitness, and appearance, and to prepare for sports competition. Here are examples.
- Fat loss, weight management and body shaping for health and appearance.
- General fitness, including strength, balance, aerobic fitness, blood glucose, blood pressure, cholesterol and bone density management, and psychological well-being.
- Fitness for participation in other activities like sports and the military and related physical fitness requirements.
- Disease management including type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis and heart and lung disease.
