History Overview: Bodybuilding & Strength Training
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May 15, 2006, 11:14
Throughout time, medical practitioners, physical therapists and personal trainers recommend the benefits of strength training and bodybuilding. But resistance training or weight lifting was not always the work-out, we have known it to be. If one were to step back in time, the findings, changes and advancements of bodybuilding would be amazing.
For instance, back in the late 1800’s, strength training was thought of as an activity for an individual with super human strength. The fitness program was not considered for normal folks of the era. In fact, people were under the misguided conception that bodybuilding would diminish any athletic stamina. Moreover, the only gents lifting a barbell or weight were circus strongmen.
At the end of the great depression, athletes started experimenting with lifting weights. Then all professional sport teams hired trainers so that athletes could incorporate weight lifting to enhance their physical performance in sports.
In the 1980’s the fallacy that the aging adult could not do anything to prevent the loss of muscle mass was dispelled. Bodybuilding/strength training programs became the growing trend in older participants; however the threat, risk and misnomer the lifting weights in older people would trigger cardiac complications or injury.
In the late 80s, Tufts University researchers (in Boston, Massachusetts) tested the bounds of strength training in study group of volunteers. Participants were men between the age of 60 and 70 years old. Volunteers exerted 80 percent of their capacity. These clinical trials contradicted myths on aging and bodybuilding because neither injuries nor cardiac episodes were reported over the twelve weeks period. Over the three month period, volunteers increase muscles mass by 10 to 12 percent larger and increased their strength up to 175 percent.
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