.png)
“Lifting weights is just for the gym bros.”
“Lifting weights is just for people who want to flaunt their bodies at the beach.”
“I am too old to lift weights.”
“I would hurt myself if I tried to lift weights.”
If you have ever found yourself saying any of the above statements, then this post is for you.
I recently had a conversation with a client of mine that reminded me of how much strength training has to offer the average person.
She is in her late 50s, a mother and now a grandmother.
She was a relatively healthy person, at a healthy body weight, and she walked or cycled frequently.
Over the last six months, we have established a gym routine for her, training a couple of times a week, and have adjusted her sleep and nutrition habits to support her training and health. Just the basics, nothing fancy or all-consuming.
She told me the other day what an impact regular training has had on her life. Not only does she feel strong and capable, and she can carry her grandchild for 1.5 hours when they are out, but it has also been a huge mindset shift for her.
She explained how she did not see herself as someone who “lifted weights”, but now she wants it to remain a regular part of her life.
For her, weight training is also a meditative process, and it allows her to push herself mentally and gain confidence in what her body is capable of. It also provides space in her week where she reserves time for herself and to invest in her health.
After working in the fitness industry for a long time and especially working with more experienced athletes where progress is about improving performance and where it takes a considerable amount of effort to move the needle, it is easy to neglect talking about the huge benefits even a small amount of strength training can have for someone who is currently not doing any.
So today, I am going to cover the top 8 reasons that you should make strength training a regular part of your week.
Now, I am not talking about needing to train your socks off 10hrs a week, but even adding in 1-2 hrs a week spread across 1-3 sessions will produce most of the health and wellness benefits. More training will accrue better results, especially for your strength and performance, but most of the health benefits actually occur within the initial hour or two per week.
Fighting muscle-loss
Most people lose approximately 3-8% of their muscle mass EACH DECADE after the age of 30, and this is even faster after 60 at 6-15%! (1,2)
That means:
97%-92% in your 40s (still pretty good) 95%
94%-84% in your 50s 90%
91%-76% in your 60s 85%
85%-61% in your 70s 75%
79%-46% in your 80s! 65%
And this doesn't even take into account that many people have nowhere near the maximum muscle mass that they could have before their 30s (3).
Healthy Ageing
Many of the effects we associate with ageing are actually the result of decreases in activity levels (4).
When I say healthy ageing, I'm not just talking about being able to put your own socks on when you are 80, but the usual complaints that people make anywhere from the age of 30+ about how “it isn’t like it used to be in my 20s”.
It isn't until about 60 years old that we see things like your metabolism start to have true age-related declines independently of physical activity and body composition (5).
This isn’t to say that nothing changes until you are in your 60s, as there are some physiological changes, decreases in performance (6) and definitely significant changes for women through menopause, but unless you are trying to compete in the Olympics, your body is capable of maintaining its condition much better than most people give it credit for.
Injury Risk Reduction
There is a phrase, “Everyone trips, but not everyone falls”. One of the factors in you tripping but being about to catch yourself is your ability to produce sufficient force in enough time to catch yourself (7,8,9). This is particularly important as you age (10,11), but as you can imagine, if you have insufficient strength earlier in life, then you are not immune to falling.
This isn't just a benefit for your golden years; exercise has been shown to reduce acute sports injuries by 30% and overuse injuries by almost 50% (12) in younger people.
Improved bone density
Another factor if you trip and do fall is whether you can dust yourself off and keep going or will you break whatever you landed on.
Your bone density has a huge impact on whether they will break when you land on them.
Osteoporosis (very low bone density) affects 30% of women and 20% of men over 50 worldwide, with those stats getting worse as you age. (13,14,15)
Once again, strength training can play a significant role in preventing or even improving the decline in body density! (16,17,18)
Joint health
Strength training is also a key element in the management and risk reduction of osteoarthritis (OA). (19,20)
Greater muscle mass of the relevant muscles is associated with less severe visible cartilage damage (21,22), and greater strength is predictive of less symptoms. (23)
Weight-loss
This effect is small, but if you have more muscle, it will increase your energy expenditure because muscle tissue requires energy to survive and because it will make you a slightly heavier person therefore, you will expend more energy just moving around.
This is sometimes portrayed as a huge “metabolism booster!” when, realistically, the effects will be modest, but you can think of it as an added bonus.
Each kg of muscle will burn about 13kcals/kg to keep it alive and an extra 7-9 kcals from having to carry it around. So, each kg of muscle would increase your total caloric needs by about 20-22 kcals/day. (there is a great calculator here for estimating the calorie increase for you) That being said, if you put on a more significant amount of muscle, say 10kg (about ½ of what most men can gain naturally), there will start to be a larger effect, e.g. 200-220 kcals/day. (note: if you are losing weight, your caloric needs will be going down by about 7-9 kcals/kg of fat lost from no longer having to carry it around, so some of the increase in muscle mass may be offset)
Insulin sensitivity - Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is the result of insulin insensitivity, meaning that your body is no longer responding to the insulin that is released after you eat, and therefore, the sugars in your blood do not get cleared effectively.
Strength training can directly improve your insulin sensitivity, especially when performed at higher intensities (24,25,26). This is because when you do strength training, the muscles themselves gain more insulin receptors. (27)
Mental Health
Strength training is associated with a meaningful reduction in anxiety (28) and depressive symptoms. (29,30) This is probably partly due to the positive social interactions of going to a gym or training with other people, as well as the fact that most people expect to feel better after training (31), but it is also possibly due to neurochemical changes. (32,33,34)
Physical Capability and Quality of Life
Strength is not just there to stop you from getting injured or sick. Have you ever said to yourself, “I used to be able to do xyz but now I can’t” or dropped out of an event because of a “bad back” or “my knee is not good today”.
Have you ever had to sit out on an activity that you enjoy because you weren’t physically up to it?
The good news is that the above reductions in muscle mass, joint health, and injuries are not mandatory, particularly before the age of 60.
This is what strength training can do; it can stop the things that limit you and improve your ability to do the things you love.
And these are just some of the benefits! strength training and gaining muscle mass also seem to have positive benefits for decreasing overall inflammation, cardiovascular disease, various cancers, and dementia. (35)
So, what is holding you back? Can you spare 2 hrs a week to do what is probably the most important thing for your health outside of eating and sleeping?
What is it worth for you to be able to keep up with your friends or kids and to have a better quality of life for the whole second half of it??
As they say, The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is Now.
If you would like help getting started, then contact me below, and I will help you figure out what your next steps should be.
References
If you want a deeper dive, reference 35 is a really good place to start 🙌
1 Holloszy, “The Biology of Aging.”
2 Holloszy; Iii et al., “Epidemiology of Sarcopenia.”
3 Walker et al., “Body Composition in Male Lifelong Trained Strength, Sprint and Endurance Athletes and Healthy Age-Matched Controls.”
4 Wolff-Hughes, Bassett, and Fitzhugh, “Population-Referenced Percentiles for Waist-Worn Accelerometer-Derived Total Activity Counts in U.S. Youth.”
5 Pontzer et al., “Daily Energy Expenditure through the Human Life Course.”
6 Betik and Hepple, “Determinants of VO2 Max Decline with Aging.”
7 Maffiuletti et al., “Rate of Force Development.”
8 Aagaard et al., “Role of the Nervous System in Sarcopenia and Muscle Atrophy with Aging.”
9 Tinetti, “Preventing Falls in Elderly Persons.”
10 Wolfson et al., “Strength Is a Major Factor in Balance, Gait, and the Occurrence of Falls.”
11 Wolfson et al.
12 Lauersen, Bertelsen, and Andersen, “The Effectiveness of Exercise Interventions to Prevent Sports Injuries.”
13 Melton et al., “Perspective. How Many Women Have Osteoporosis?”
14 Kanis et al., “Long-Term Risk of Osteoporotic Fracture in Malmö.”
15“Bone Density and Fracture Risk in Men - Melton - 1998 - Journal of Bone and Mineral Research - Wiley Online Library.”
16 Zhao, Zhao, and Xu, “The Effects of Differing Resistance Training Modes on the Preservation of Bone Mineral Density in Postmenopausal Women.”
17 Westcott, “Resistance Training Is Medicine.”
18Cauley and Giangregorio, “Physical Activity and Skeletal Health in Adults.”
19 Hunter and Bierma-Zeinstra, “Osteoarthritis.”
20 Lin et al., “What Does Best Practice Care for Musculoskeletal Pain Look Like?”
21 Hudelmaier et al., “Correlation of Knee-Joint Cartilage Morphology with Muscle Cross-Sectional Areas vs. Anthropometric Variables.”
22 Ericsson et al., “Association between Thigh Muscle Strength Four Years after Partial Meniscectomy and Radiographic Features of Osteoarthritis 11 Years Later.”
23 Segal et al., “The Effect of Thigh Strength on Incident Radiographic and Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis in the Multicenter Osteoarthritis (MOST) Study.”
24 Liu et al., “Resistance Exercise Intensity Is Correlated with Attenuation of HbA1c and Insulin in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes.”
25 Jiajin, Jiahao, and Yifan, “Effects of Resistance Training on Insulin Sensitivity in the Elderly.”
26 Niemann et al., “Strength Training and Insulin Resistance.”
27 Holloszy, “Exercise-Induced Increase in Muscle Insulin Sensitivity.”
28 Gordon et al., “The Effects of Resistance Exercise Training on Anxiety.”
29 Gordon et al., “Association of Efficacy of Resistance Exercise Training With Depressive Symptoms.”
30 Singh et al., “A Randomized Controlled Trial of High versus Low-Intensity Weight Training versus General Practitioner Care for Clinical Depression in Older Adults.”
31 OConnor, Herring, and Adrian, “Mental Health Benefits of Strength Training in Adults.”
32 Strickland and Smith, “The Anxiolytic Effects of Resistance Exercise.”
33 Cassilhas et al., “Mood, Anxiety, and Serum IGF-1 in Elderly Men given 24 Weeks of High Resistance Exercise.”
34 Fiuza-Luces et al., “Exercise Is the Real Polypill.”
35 Maestroni et al., “The Benefits of Strength Training on Musculoskeletal System Health.”
Comments