The importance of strength training in the older population

People don’t just want to live long. They want to have a high quality of life for as long as they are alive. The former, the time you live, is what’s known as your lifespan, the later, how much of that time you are healthy and have a high quality of life, is called your health-span. Ideally, your health-span is as close to your lifespan as possible.

Why am I explaining all this? Well, as you age, your body degenerates, your strength and speed decreases, your muscles atrophy, you become weaker and more prone to injury. As your immune system slowly becomes less and less effective your increase your likelihood of sickness as well. Most people resort to medication - and that’s fine, many people would die without it, however, there is one medication that so incredibly effective that if a company invented it and could put it in a bottle they would make millions upon millions. The medication is exercise. It has been shown to decrease all cause mortality by up to 30%. Think about that! Just by exercising you can vastly reduce your chances of heart-attack, cancer, stroke, infection, etc. There is no medication that even comes close to this.

So if exercise is this effective, why am I advocating for a particular type of exercise, namely, strength training? Well, an elderly person who breaks their hip has a roughly 20% of dying in the first year after their hip injury. Strength training can mitigate many of reasons your health-span decreases as you age. Sarcopenia is muscle loss, yet if you lift heavy weights, you gain not just retain but even build muscle up into your 80s. Building strength and muscle also tendon and bone health. Osteoporosis is a huge problem in elderly women and strength training can help mitigate bone loss and thus breaks and injuries as women age.

Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. You can’t just take a pill. But if you are in your 50s or older, you can get a barbell and some weights and start doing the compound movements like the squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead press, which will pack on muscle, strengthen tendons, build bone density, and build strength and power in fundamental human movement patterns. Of course, although I advocate for barbell exercises because they require stabilization, control, and better tune the nervous system, machine exercises will work just as well to put on muscle and increase strength. Just get in the gym and get going.