Strong Medicine

If you’re looking for a fitness boost, strength training could do the trick

Strength training isn’t just for bodybuilders any more. It’s for soccer moms, traveling salespeople, 98-pound weaklings, and anyone else who wants to increase stamina, strengthen bones, and even improve mental health. It’s especially valuable for runners and other athletes, because muscle helps your body burn more calories. Whether you run, bike, swim, or climb mountains, adding in some strength training is a great way to mix up your regimen and increase your overall physical fitness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strength training over time can reduce symptoms of arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, back pain, and even depression. In the shorter term, lifting weights can help athletes develop a powerful upper body, improve balance, and strengthen quadriceps.

Get Pumped

Even if you’re happy with your current endurance level, there are benefits to be reaped from strength training. As we age, most of us start to lose muscle mass, no matter how much aerobic activity we might get. That’s why strength and conditioning experts like Kent Adams, PhD, a fellow at the American College of Sports Medicine, recommend strength training programs for runners. “It’s not about building big muscles,” Adams says. “It’s about keeping you healthy so you can run longer and stronger.”

What’s more, building muscle strength boosts your metabolism. A pound of fat burns just three calories a day, but a pound of muscle burns 30 to 50 calories per day, according to the University of Michigan Health System.

As with any exercise regimen, experts recommend warming up before a weightlifting workout, and starting slowly. To achieve the maximum benefits — and avoid injury — concentrate on your form and breathing as well as selecting an appropriate weight and number of repetitions (reps). In a gym full of musclebound weightlifters, you might be tempted to pile on the barbells. But don’t. Instead, ask a personal trainer to show you the proper technique for each exercise.

“Build a baseline that you can reliably accomplish and gradually work your way up from there,” recommends Dr. Jonathan Chang, an orthopedic surgeon at the Pacific Orthopedic Group in Alhambra, Calif. So go for less weight, but more reps. And stop when your form falters — that means your muscles are fatigued. Cool down with a 5-to-10-minute stretch afterward.

Lift two to three times a week to work your muscles to rest, and rebuild for 48 hours between workouts. If you’re going to do aerobic activity on the same day, do it before you lift, not after.

Weigh Your Options

The question of whether you should opt for free weights or weight machines has no universal answer. A good gym will have both, so the choice is yours. Free weights require you to balance the weight as you lift, so maintaining good form is critical. Machines are a little safer and make it easier to adjust the amount of weight.

But you don’t have to join a gym to get the full benefits of strength training. You can get a complete upper and lower body workout with nothing more than a pair of adjustable-weight dumbbells. These space-savers can generally be set at any five-pound increment up to 50 — so you can aim as high as you want.

What’s Past Is Passed

Get a historical tour on a run through Berlin

Click here for larger map of Berlin

In Berlin, a city where layers of history weave a thread through some of the seminal moments of the 20th century, a run can be an eye-opening window into the past. Indeed, to sprint through the heart of the German capital is to pass some of the most iconic landmarks of recent memory on a well-marked plain.

A 3.7-mile run beginning and ending at the city’s architectural chef-d’oeuvre, the Brandenburg Gate, passes monuments that aim to memorialize Berlin’s checkered past. By heading off on Ebertstrasse, with the lush expanse of the Tiergarten (which you later will duck into) on your right, you come to arguably the most somber of such commemorations: Peter Eisenman’s haunting Holocaust Memorial.

Take the first left onto Hannah-Arendt-Strasse, where you’ll notice the memorial’s most striking feature: 2,711 concrete slabs that cover an area roughly the size of four football fields. Pause a moment and then continue through the second intersection to Wilhelmstrasse, where you’ll make a left, darting past the asymmetrical new-look British Embassy before making a right onto Unter den Linden.

Jogging down the wide, gravel-covered median of Unter den Linden, you’ll pass sidewalk bistros and, after making a right onto Friedrichstrasse, Volkswagen’s expansive, multileveled Automobil Forum — part showroom, part museum. Badly damaged during WWII, Friedrichstrasse was once the hub of East Berlin. Follow it for several blocks, and after 10 intersections, make a right onto Zimmerstrasse.

Galloping along the left shoulder, you’ll notice the inlaid brick trail with bronze plaques reading “Die Berliner Mauer.” This is where the Berlin Wall once stood, and where, a block away, on Niederkirchnerstrasse, a 660-foot stretch remains.

By making a right onto Stresemannstrase, you’ll be gazing at Berlin’s future, encapsulated in the resurgence of Potsdamer Platz. Make a left onto Potsdamer Strasse, taking in the striking skeletal façades, and then a right onto Ben-Gurion-Strasse to enter the Tiergarten and what was once West Berlin, where you’ll soon cross the Strasse des 17. Juni and get a glimpse of the Soviet War Memorial, the final resting place for 2,500 World War II soldiers.

Continue on to the Platz der Republik, where Sir Norman Foster’s glass cupola dramatically tops the 1894 neo-Renaissance Reichstag, a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate. This once-forbidding Cold War boundary will welcome you with open arms — an added triumph to your final stretch.

Getting There: Continental offers daily nonstop service to Berlin from its hub in New York/Newark.