Anaerobic Exercise: What Are Their Benefits?

Do you know what anaerobic exercise is ? Before starting an exercise plan, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve or maintain. If you want to lose weight, aerobics will do better. However, if you want to train to gain strength and power, you should try anaerobic exercise.

Research proves that aerobic and anaerobic exercise are complementary because they give you the energy you need for the former. Find out what these exercises – also known as static exercises – are all about in this article!

What are anaerobic exercises?

Your muscles work during exercise. And as we know, every job requires energy. In this particular case, anaerobic exercises are high-intensity, short-duration exercises that require a powerful and rapid source of energy from the body.

This fuel is present in direct sources: muscle ATP (also called energy currency), phosphocreatine (PC) and glucose.

Anaerobic exercise is often interspersed with aerobic series. For example, while walking, you can sprint or run fast for 10 seconds to 1 minute, and then continue walking to replenish your energy.

The time of explosive exertion characterizing static, strength or anaerobic exercise ranges from 1 minute to 120 seconds.

In this practice, you activate two energy mechanisms. In the first 10 seconds, the body uses creatinine phosphate, especially for short-term and very high-power exercise. When exercise takes a little longer, your body uses glucose as an energy substrate to produce lactic acid.

If you extend this practice – from 20 to 120 seconds – you develop lactic acidosis, which creates conditions for fatigue.

What are the benefits of anaerobic exercise?

While dynamic exercise has many benefits, regular static exercise increases muscle strength and power. It also improves endurance and basic metabolism.

On the other hand, a good walk has immediate benefits, but it takes time and persistence to achieve the benefits of anaerobic exercise. You will only start noticing them after 3 months.

Disease prevention

Anaerobic exercise strengthens the immune system and helps prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes. They also reduce cardiovascular conditions, arthritis, and back pain.

Developing and strengthening muscle mass and bones

Weightlifting with dumbbells or equipment is used to increase muscle mass. Lifting weights involves muscles and bones, so anaerobic exercise increases bone density, reducing the risk of osteoporosis.

Paying attention to the weight you can lift depending on the type of exercise is essential to avoid injuries.

Improving the quality of life

Anaerobic exercise strengthens the musculoskeletal structure, leading to greater balance in movement and greater self-confidence and independence in daily activities.

Increased metabolic rate

Experts recommend aerobic exercise for weight loss, but anaerobic exercise also contributes very well to this by increasing your muscle mass.

By rebuilding your muscles, anaerobic exercise reduces the amount of fat, which results in relative weight loss. In other words, aerobic exercise burns lipids, and anaerobic exercise increases lean body fat.

This contributes to an increase in the rate of basic metabolism, i.e. the amount of energy needed by the body to perform its vital functions.

The factor most closely related to the resting metabolic rate is lean mass. You do this by lifting weights, which supports the hypothesis that this exercise is useful in treating obesity.

Increasing endurance and power

Anaerobic exercises are designed to build endurance. There comes a time in training when the legs or arms can’t hold out anymore. It happens when the blood lactate levels rise to levels that the body cannot get rid of immediately. This leads to muscle acidification, fatigue and loss of performance.

Increasingly widening the threshold is part of anaerobic training in building athletic endurance. Among your routine, there are strength exercises that work on the muscles that store more lactate.

Examples of anaerobic exercises

There are two types of strength or static exercises. Isometric when there is continuous muscle contraction at a fixed resistance and isotonic when muscle contraction can overcome resistance (weight lifting):

• Weightlifting : uses your muscles to maximum performance in quick succession without resorting to breathing. Practice generates power, strength, and endurance right up to muscle hypertrophy.
• Sprint : Consists of very intense short races, such as a 100 meter sprint, and develops power and speed in the legs and torso.

• Crunches : This is an exercise that can bring your muscle endurance to the point of fatigue, with increasingly longer series of repetitions.
• Sticks : The isometry includes sticks and sticks that use the athlete’s weight. In them, the muscles ask for an energy reserve, which allows the body to be lifted multiple times.
• Squats : They also use your body weight, as do push-ups, pull-ups, and squats. In squats, the weight of the torso falls straight onto the thighs, while the arms are extended or on the nape of the neck.
• Push – ups : These exercises use gravity as resistance to overcome. Like the bars, but upside down, the arms lift the weight of the torso in this exercise.

Tips for doing anaerobic exercise

First of all, you should not begin an anaerobic routine without a medical examination, especially if you have any medical condition. At the same time, if you are a beginner and are overweight, you should not do anaerobic exercise. The same goes for pregnant women.

Before starting, you should do some warm-up or cardio training that gradually increases your physical activity. This removes lactic acid, which increases heart rate and blood flow, preventing the appearance of stiffness.

In the same way, aerobic exercise should include stretching to prepare the body for the demands of anaerobic exercise.

These exercises are intense. Therefore, we recommend that you exclude complicated movements at the beginning and allow yourself to gain experience in order to gradually add difficulties.

Anaerobic exercise requires professional care and attention

Anaerobic exercise is very demanding and can cause injuries if you are not careful. It is important to know, for example, that there is an anaerobic threshold. This is the maximum intensity of exercise that you can subject your body to without extreme fatigue.

Exercise above this threshold will depend on many factors: type of training, muscle composition, diet, and environment. Overall, the body has to adapt to different levels, which can be dealt with without complications below this threshold.

Exceeding this threshold requires professional training and monitoring, sometimes with a view to practicing competitive sports.