Q: How important is weight training, even if you don’t bother about bulging muscles?

T.K., Guwahati

Here are 10 reasons to hit the weights: Weight training can reduce your blood pressure. Weight training raises your basal metabolic rate. This increases the number of calories you burn all through the day (even while you’re sleeping).

Weight training slows down and may reverse the natural decline in your overall metabolic rate. This decline typically occurs around the age of 30.

Weight training is a key element in the prevention of osteoporosis.

Weight training will decrease your risk of developing diabetes as an adult.

Weight training will reduce your risk of developing colon cancer.

Weight training decreases your level of low-density lipoproteins (bad cholesterol).

Weight training improves posture.

Weight training increases immuno-functioning.

Weight training can greatly increase your level of stability and coordination in day-to-day activities.

Q: I am a serious lifter and have just shifted base. Can you advise me on the kind of gym I should join?

M.R., Calcutta

Ideally the gym should have free weights and a squat rack. It should allow deadlifting or cleans, the use of chalk and should have a lifting platform or a designated area for lifting free weights.

Look around the gym — a good gym provides an environment in which focussed hard work is the norm, not the exception.

Look for someone who is genuinely working hard and is all drenched in sweat. If you can’t see a person like this, leave immediately. Good gyms attract hard workers; you should see them everywhere.

Look at the staff. Ask them questions about their own training. Do their answers indicate that they have a decent grasp of their own training? If the staff are not qualified, leave immediately.

The final word:

Fitness can and should be a lot of fun, but it is also quite often hard work. If you are not willing to work hard, then you will not get great results from your training and you will continue to be dissatisfied. Most gyms nowadays are set up in such a way that working hard is positively discouraged and, as a result, people get nowhere near achieving the desired result.

If you find a gym where free weights and free intensive cardiovascular workout are day-to-day things, you will be well on the way to actually getting fit instead of just playing at it.