Aside from the pride that comes from knowing you can lift something so heavy, there are many other benefits that deadlifts bring to the table.
You get increased core strength
When you perform a deadlift, you will find yourself having to tighten the muscles in your stomach, chest, and upper and lower back region. These are the abdominal, glutes, oblique and lateral muscles and they are the ones most commonly being referred to when people talk about the central muscles of the body.
Continuous lifting of your barbells or weight continuously trains these muscles, making them more adapted to supporting large weights as you progress in your training. Eventually the result is an overall strong core that allows you to be better able to generate the most power out of your body when performing any exercise.
You get increased overall strength
While it is true that you core muscles gain a lot of strength from the continuous training that comes with lifting barbells, they are not the only muscles that stand to benefit from it. Other muscle groups involved in lifting weights include the neck muscles, hamstrings, calves and the inner thigh muscles. In truth, deadlifts are one of the few exercises that are known to exercise the most muscle groups in the body.If you think about it, deadlifts are a form of extreme physical labor. You are constantly lifting an item that you can feasibly (not comfortably) pick up for a short period of time.
The result of regular deadlifting in this case is an overall increased strength for the entire body. It is a source of a lot of pride knowing that you are in fact physically strong enough to lift items that are actually difficult for other people to lift.
It helps you increase muscle mass
Out of the millions of people that exercise in the world today, many do it because they want to enjoy the bigger muscles that come with it. As mentioned before, deadlifting exercises a huge amount of muscles in your body at a go. Just one lift and all of these muscles are at work trying to support the weight being lifted. It goes without saying then that after a while of regular deadlifting, you will experience muscle growth that contributes greatly to your overall muscle mass.This is of course in direct relation to the kind of food that you eat as well. The two are connected, and eating the right kind of muscle building foods makes exercises like deadlifting far more effective. So if you are looking for just the right kind of exercise that with your diet makes you buff and muscly, then deadlifts are the exercises that you should be focusing on. If muscle building is your goal, deadlifting will be an excellent all-rounded activity for you to partake in.
It helps you burn more fat
This is often a very surprising revelation for many people going into deadlifting, but the science behind it is sound. In order to perform a deadlift, you need all of your muscles to work together, exerting themselves in order to support the weight that you are carrying. This exertion of course requires a lot of energy, which can be obtained from the food you consume, and also the fat you may have stored in the body.Exerting this much hard work on the muscles of the body has an effect that is referred to as the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), a condition in which the body continues to burn calories in the body even hours after you are finished exercising.
Ideally the heavier your weight, then the more your muscles will exert themselves, and the more fat you will burn.
A study by William J. Kraemer in 1999 found that people who combined deadlifting with their other diet and exercise routines experienced a significant amount of fat loss compared to the individuals that didn’t.
If you are looking to cut out some fat from the body and make your body leaner, then you need to look into deadlifting as an exercise to help you achieve that goal.
You improve you overall exercise potential
As discussed before, deadlifts engage a lot of muscles in the body. When all of these muscles become strengthened, the effect is felt strongly in almost any other exercise you undertake.This is because many exercises tend to engage far fewer muscles of the body compared to the deadlift, and so it makes sense that you find yourself able to do a lot of other exercises better as a result.
This is why many sporting athletes always have deadlifting as part of their exercise regimen. In this sense you can consider deadlifting as a great base from which you can comfortably and most effectively carry out quite a wide range of exercises.
Your cardiovascular health will improve
Did you know that deadlifting can be a form of cardio exercise? Think about it. Whenever you are in a situation that requires you to lift a huge amount of weights, then the act of lifting itself will cause an increase in your heart rate. This of course depends on the intensity of the lifts, which is determined by not only the number of reps but also the weight that you are lifting.It can be easy to work up your heart rate as your body works to help support the weight you are carrying, and in this way deadlifts can actually improve your heart health. This is because your heart will become more efficient at delivering oxygen to your muscles so that they can help you lift better.
It gets your hormones going
One of the more direct side effects of deadlifting is the noted increase in the production of hormones in the body, such as the growth hormone and testosterone. This happens because deadlifting is the one exercise that engages the most muscle groups in the body at one go. It is a complex body movement which places a lot of metabolic stress on your muscles in order to support the lifting. The body responds to ease this stress by increasing the production of hormones that make the lifting easier such as the growth hormone (GH) that helps you strengthen your muscles and testosterone which not only aids muscle building, but also a brings with it a number of other health benefits such as increased libido for men, stronger bones and a stronger heart. It improves your posture
One of the most important instructions that you will ever learn while engaging in this exercise is that you need to keep your back straight as you lift your weight. You may have most likely heard someone advise to never lift with your back, but always with your legs. This is similar to the principle of deadlifting, which has you bend your knees and exercise a great deal of your leg muscles while keeping your back straight. This type of movement teaches you to always keep your back straight; an act that is keeps your body posture good and helps you avoid any back strain. Your grip becomes strong
This is a very obvious benefit that is often very easily overlooked. Deadlifts help to improve your grip because you learn the most effective way to spread your hands and clutch at the bar in order to maximize your lift.
Constant lifting progressively improves the strength in your hands, allowing you to better perform tasks that require a firmer grip.
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