by Lisa M LaVergne

Created on: November 14, 2008   Last Updated: January 13, 2009

When many people hear the term "strength training," they immediately think of body builders and athletes, lifting weights to build big, bulging muscles. This however, is not the only form of strength training, and not all forms of strength training will result in large, bulky muscles.

Strength training is in fact, simply the use of using resistance to provide healthy muscle structure, and is a form of exercise that should be practiced by everyone. So while strength training will indeed help you to gain strength, it also offers many other benefits as well. Routine strength training helps to improve muscle mass, promote healthy bone density and provide anaerobic endurance. It also helps to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and can help to prevent health conditions such as arthritis.

When used in conjunction with dieting, strength training will help to exercise metabolism, which will increase the amount of calories your burn. This helps you to loose weight easier, or if you are already at a healthy weight, it will help you to maintain your figure by keeping your metabolism strong and regular.

If you've never performed any type of strength training exercises in the past, it is important that you start out slowly, and make sure that you are performing exercises properly in order to ensure that you do not cause physical harm to your body. You should also take your overall health into consideration, so before getting started, a trip to your general physician for a consultation is always best. He or she can help to determine if you are in good physical health to begin a strength training regimen, and can possibly recommend strength training exercises that will work best for you. You may also consider hiring a personal trainer to help assist you with your strength training when first getting started.

When starting out with strength training exercises, a beginner has many choices available to them as far as the type of exercises they can choose from, and the type of equipment the can use. Light dumbbells, weighted medicine balls, resistance bands and even stability balls, can all be used as tools during your strength training exercises. For a completely thorough strength training routine, and to keep things interesting, you can even mix your training up a bit, by using multiple strength training tools.

To gain the most success from your strength training exercises, you should perform exercises that will target each of the major muscle groups. These muscle groups include

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