Newton's Laws of Motion and How the Relate to Exercise

                Newton’s First Law of Motion states that when an object is at rest it will stay at rest unless acted upon by some outside force and when an object is in motion, it will remain in motion until acted upon by some outside force.  This law explains inertia, both at rest and active states.  In order to understand this law as it relates to weight training, resting inertia is as simple as a dumbbell lying on the floor.  In order to lift the weight, you must apply a force greater than the weight.   The second part of this law that deals with active inertia tells us that if we move a weight, it will remain in motion on its own accord without the additional application of force to keep it moving.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion relates to force and its relationship to mass and acceleration.  It states that in order to create a force you must place a mass into motion with acceleration and a change in velocity.  This can relate to weight lifting as when a weight (mass) is moving (has velocity) it has momentum.  In order to continually create force when weight lifting, you must continually change the speed of the object.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion is known as the equal and opposite reaction principle.  The law states that objects in contact exert equal and opposite forces on each other.  An example of this law is doing a push up and that in order to do one, we must push against the floor.  In turn, the floor pushes against us and thus allows us to raise our truck to complete the push up.  In that way both we and the floor are exerting equal force upon one another when in contact.

So see, some of that stuff we learned in high school physics has some real life value if you apply it!