How to Strengthen Your Muscles

You need to strengthen your muscles at least 2 days a week. The activities you chose should work all the major muscle groups of your body (legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms). To gain health benefits, muscle-strengthening activities need to be done to the point where it's hard for you to do another repetition without help. You can do activities that strengthen your muscles on the same or different days that you do aerobic activity, whatever works best. There are many ways you can strengthen your muscles, whether it's at home or the gym. You may want to try the following: Lifting Weights, Working with resistance bands, or exercises that use your body weight for resistance (i.e. push ups/crunches), Yoga or Pilate's.