With the summer season on the way, you may be feeling antsy to get out of the gym and start doing other activities while the weather is still nice.

Whether your passion is running, rollerblading, swimming, playing a game of tennis with a friend, or hitting the pool for a swim, you still cannot neglect the strength training element of your workout routine.

No form of outdoor cardio exercise is going to be able to replace the unique benefits of strength training, so it’s something that you must make sure you maintain throughout the summer.

Those who take the summer off from the weights entirely will be at risk for a number of negative consequences, and restarting back in the fall will be that much harder…

While it’s an excellent idea to forego the bikes, treadmills, and ellipticals in your gym to get your cardio sessions in outside while the weather’s warm (although I’d argue you don’t need them in the winter either, but that’s another topic…), maintaining your strength training is a necessity.

As we age, muscle mass loss is inevitable without regular strength training workouts.

While exercise does burn calories, you only work out a few hours per week. To increase fat burning, you need to increase your metabolism, specifically your Resting Metabolic Rate. Those who have a higher degree of muscle mass burn more calories even when they’re at rest.1

As a person ages, metabolism naturally slows down, leading to gradual weight gain. Muscle is a great way to counterbalance the body’s natural slowdown, and the earlier a person starts, the easier it will be to maintain that muscle over time.

The muscle gains you achieve with a proper strength training program can help reverse this process and actually INCREASE metabolism!

As a person grows older, bone loss is inevitable, especially for women after menopause.2 This can lead to bones breaking more easily, feelings of fatigue and weakness, and reduced tolerance to physical activity. Weight-bearing exercises strengthen bones, helping minimize natural bone loss and reducing the risk of injury.3

While other outdoor activities may be weight-bearing in nature and still help with bone strength and formation, no other exercise is more weight-bearing than strength training.

Strength Training And Disease Prevention

Strength training has been shown to provide a number of health benefits, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.5 By continuing your strength training year-round, you’ll continue to reap the rewards of the hard work you put in during the cold winter months.

A Tufts University study even found that participants in a strength training program were able to see a marked reduction in arthritis pain. In fact, the study found that the end result was better than that received from medications.

Strength Training and Insulin Sensitivity

Finally, the last nice thing about strength training that you must note is its impact on insulin sensitivity.

Your insulin sensitivity level is one of the key factors determining your risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome, a condition that’s starting to impact more and more females.

A regular strength training workout routine will help to keep your tissue cells more responsive to insulin, so should you consume carbohydrates in your diet (a common thing to do over the summer), your body will be able to better utilize those carbohydrates, directing them towards the muscle cells rather than the body fat cells, as was noted in a study published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise journal.6

This helps keep you leaner as well since you’ll have a reduced rate of converting those carbohydrates into body fat stores.

It appears the primary reason for this is due to the increased lean muscle tissue development, which then increases the insulin sensitivity level.

So as you can hopefully see, now (or ever) is NOT the time to forgo strength training. Strength training is the single most effective form of exercise for guaranteeing good health into the future and keeping you leading an active lifestyle for years to come.

It takes 2-3 sessions per week to see all these benefits, which leaves plenty of time to get outside and do all the other summertime activities you want to do.

By making the commitment to stay consistent with your strength training workout throughout the summer months, you’ll also prevent having to go through the process of getting back into it come fall, which can prove to be quite frustrating if quite a significant amount of strength has been lost.

1.     “Weight Loss.” Metabolism and Weight Loss: How You Burn Calories. N.p., 6 Oct. 2011. Web. 06 May 2014.

2.     “Aging Changes in the Bones – Muscles – Joints: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 3 Sept. 2012. Web. 09 May 2014.

3.     “Build Up Your Bones! | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Winter 2012. Web. 09 May 2014.

4.     Layne, JE. & Nelson, ME. (1999). The effects of progressive resistance training on bone density: A review. Medicine and Science in Sports And Exercise. 31(1):25-30.

5.     “Why Strength Training?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 24 Feb. 2011. Web. 09 May 2014.