There are plenty of obvious benefits that probably come to mind when you decide to lift some heavy weights. You likely do strength training to get stronger, build bigger muscles, and improve your general health, for example.
But the benefits don’t stop there — did you know that your brain really loves weightlifting too? Here’s how lifting weights can help you build a stronger and more resilient central nervous system.
The Benefits of Weightlifting for Your Central Nervous System
1. Improves Your Mind/Muscle Connection
The most obvious benefit of lifting weights is that it helps you become stronger. The more weight you lift, the more your muscles need to adapt to carry that load — and when you do this consistently enough, your muscles grow bigger and stronger as a result.
However, it also turns out that your nervous system has to make adaptations, too, which also contribute to shaping a stronger and more athletic you!
Your muscle movements are largely dictated by your central nervous system. A motor unit is made up of a single motor neuron (or brain cell) and a muscle fiber that it activates, which means that all movement starts in the brain. As a result, your brain also has to undergo several “neural adaptations” in response to lifting.
For example, your brain learns to recruit more motor units more effectively. Research has found that training can help your brain better activate the major muscles in charge of movement. It can also help you better coordinate your muscle movements.
Altogether, these neural adaptations can then help increase the amount of force you can exert. In other words, not only does lifting weights help your muscles physically grow bigger and stronger, but it can also improve your muscle movements and coordination to help you get even stronger.
2. Boosts and Protects Cognition
In addition to the various ways that resistance training improves your physical health, it also has several positive effects on brain function as well, especially in older adults.
For example, there’s evidence that resistance training can encourage brain regeneration and gray matter volume. Lifting may also stimulate the nerves in the brain and even help with hormone secretion.
These effects have also been seen in clinical trials. For example, one study found that high-speed resistance training led to significant improvements in cognitive function in older adults with “cognitive frailty.” Resistance training is even recommended in elderly populations because it has been linked to an overall better quality of life and improvements in memory and cognitive function, which can help protect against neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.
3. May Help Regulate Your Stress Response
Stress can sometimes feel inevitable in our hectic modern lifestyles. But unavoidable as it can sometimes seem, finding ways to manage your stress response is crucial for both your mental and physical well-being.
Your stress response is reliant on three different systems: the sympathetic nervous system, parasympathetic nervous system, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA).
The sympathetic nervous system is in charge of triggering your “fight-or-flight” response, which increases your heart rate and frees up energy in response to a stressful situation.
Your parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, promotes “rest and digest” functions that help your body relax and recover.
Finally, the HPA axis involves interactions between various glands in your body that release “stress hormones” like cortisol.
Because these systems affect so many bodily functions, high levels of chronic stress are often linked to issues like anxiety and depression, as well as physical responses like high blood pressure and a weakened immune system.
While we can’t always control the things that stress us out, there are ways that we can manage our body’s stress response — for instance, by lifting weights.
For example, one smaller study that evaluated the effects of weightlifting on all three stress response systems found that resistance training led to improvements in stress response in healthy resistance-trained men.
The researchers saw decreased cortisol levels after upper body training exercises. They also saw improvements in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in response to upper and lower body exercises.
4. May Improve General Mental Health
On a related note, there’s also evidence that lifting weights may be helpful for people suffering from mental health issues like depression and anxiety.
In addition to its effects on the stress response, physical activity is also known to influence your brain’s release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, a brain chemical that directly influences your mood.
Researchers have found that more active people are less likely to suffer from mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Regular exercise has also been found to improve sleep quality, promote relaxation, and enhance overall well-being.
As a result, several studies have indicated that regular low-to-moderate intensity resistance training may help patients dealing with anxiety.
Studies have also suggested that resistance training has been linked to improved symptoms of depression as well as anxiety in older adults. There were even reported improvements in people who did not have any diagnosed mental health illnesses!
Strength Training Is Great for Brain Gains, Too!
Muscles aside, routinely going to the gym does a whole lot more for you than simply improving your body composition. With regular resistance training and lifting weights, you also strengthen one of the most vital organs in your body — your brain.
