Strength training is now the go-to for healthy ageing, with benefits newly revealed for the body and brain in preventing illness and injury.
When the Titanic sank into the icy depths of the Atlantic Ocean on April 15,1912, it took with it a surprising amount of cutting-edge fitness equipment. In the gym were the latest in early 20th-century machines: exercise bikes, rowers, an electric horse and an electric camel. The action of these last two was said to mimic the riding of the real animals ‒ considered a healthful activity.
It would be decades before the idea of formalised exercise for health in adults – minus the camels – really took off. Fast-forward through World War II, when citizens were encouraged to “keep fit” at classes in public halls with vigorous calisthenics, and the 1950s when the YWCA introduced fitness classes for women, to the global trend of dedicated fitness centres such as those that sprang up here in the 70s and 80s.
Early facilities were filled with people taking organised “aerobics” classes, with dance-like routines choreographed to contemporary hits. Participants tended to be women, with men gravitating towards weights machines.
Tracy Minnoch-Nuku remembers those days. The Tauranga-based trainer started her career in fitness as an instructor at Les Mills Dunedin in the late 1980s; she could be found teaching “Step New Body”, a cardio class where exercisers used a portable step, resistance bands and “little hand weights”. These were the first hints of resistance training, she recalls, but the goal was not building muscle. “It was all about tone,” she says. “That’s what we used to talk about. You would never see girls in the weights room. That was not a thing.”Even for men, the idea of lifting weights was for a long time consigned to the body builder, a practice regarded as odd or extreme by many.
Forty years on, things have changed. Now, exercising with weights has become the must-do for strength, aesthetics and increasingly, as the research is showing, healthy ageing.
“There’s lots more information now about the benefits of strength training,” says Richard Beddie, CEO of Exercise New Zealand, the industry body for gyms. Beddie says strength training has been steadily rising in popularity, as people of all ages learn more about its potential benefits.
“When exercise became popular for health reasons, we probably initially only understood the heart-health benefits. So going for a run was good for you because it strengthened your heart, and that was about it. If you went to the gym, you’re building muscle … but that just makes you look good. We now know that’s not the whole truth. There are many protective benefits of strength training.”
It is more common for gyms to devote less space to group classes, and more to equipment-based training.
Fitness centres around the world are catering to the strength trend by reconfiguring their gyms. Planet Fitness, one of the large US gym operators, recently announced it’s removing more than 40% of the cardio machines at many of its 2638 locations to meet the growing demand for weights and functional training.
Beddie says he’s not aware of gyms here doing similar wholesale replacements of equipment, but it is more common now for gyms to devote less, or sometimes no, space to group classes, and more to equipment-based training. “If you think of any of the new 24-hour gyms – they have a relatively small footprint and almost all of the space is what you and I would call “gym”. It has cardio equipment, sure, but it’d be three-quarters gym. So I think it’s certainly the trend.”
Hamish Kennedy is an example of the new cohort of strength trainers. Though the Auckland electrical engineer had always been fairly active, he’d never set foot in a gym until his wife “dragged” him into one three years ago. Now, he says he’s feeling fitter and stronger at 66 than he did in his 40s.
“You don’t really notice when you lose strength over a period of time. You just sort of get accustomed to it,” he says. “But every now and then I go back and try some of the earlier weights that I started on and it feels ridiculously easy. It’s quite an interesting thing to do; it gives you a kind of a point of reference.”
Kennedy says he’s been amazed at what just two half-hour strength sessions each week have done for his ability. And he’s not planning on stopping any time soon. “I think this is probably one of the most important things you can do for your health.”
Muscle is the new cool
The benefits of having a good amount of skeletal muscle mass span the whole body, according to the evidence. It shows that having and maintaining muscle mass is important through our lives, and even more so as we age.
The first and most obvious reason is that strength equals function: we can more easily move around, keep ourselves mobile and protect ourselves from falls. But there’s more to it: low muscle mass is consistently linked to higher rates of morbidity and mortality, more surgical complications, longer hospital stays and reduced quality of life, regardless of body weight or BMI.
As we age, we naturally lose muscle mass, a process known as sarcopenia. This contributes to frailty and disability – low muscle mass is related to low bone mass, meaning a higher risk of fractures – and a greater risk of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Muscle tissue acts as an endocrine organ, sending out chemical messengers called myokines. These myokines are released into the bloodstream, especially when muscles contract during exercise, and travel to other parts of the body, helping muscles “talk” to the liver, fat tissue, bones and brain. This helps control how the body uses energy, burns fat, manages blood sugar and fights inflammation, which in turn can help prevent diseases such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.
“We’ve known about the benefits of resistance training or strength training for a very long time,” says Dr Lauren Colenso-Semple, a Canada-based physiology researcher. “It’s actually really important, in my opinion, that midlife and older individuals are getting that message.”
There’s also an interesting link between muscle and brain. A growing body of evidence shows more muscle equals a lower risk of developing dementia. The myokines produced during exercise promote the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that Beddie calls “fertiliser for the brain”.
Better for brains
Studies using brain imaging have found people with better muscle health have thicker brain cortices (ie, have been associated with greater intelligence) and larger volumes in the brain regions important for cognition. It’s emerging in medical and scientific literature that improving muscle mass and strength may help protect against cognitive decline and promote healthy brain ageing.
There are two key components to building muscle: challenge and progressive overload.
When we stimulate the muscle – by lifting a challenging weight, say – micro tears happen in the muscle. The process of those tears repairing – known as hypertrophy – is how muscles grow and get stronger. Colenso-Semple explains that to gain muscle size and strength, we need an adequate stimulus on the muscle, meaning we need to move it through the full range of motion with adequate resistance.
“It needs to be sufficiently challenging. That is the stimulus for muscle growth.”
Though social media influencers are often exhorting people – especially women – to lift nothing but heavy weights, Colenso-Semple says that’s not the only way to go.
“When we think about strength gains, we need to focus on the load we’re using and really increasing that over time in a particular repetition range. Really, any resistance training in any rep range – as long as it is sufficiently challenging and progressive in nature – means we will realise those benefits.”
“Challenging” means getting close to what’s known as muscular failure. She gives an example: “If I’m doing an overhead press, and I do 10 of them and I’m trying to do an 11th and I’m really, really struggling and I can’t make it – that’s muscular failure. So we want to be close-ish to that. I don’t have to get to that point, but it’s probably good to know what that point is, because otherwise it’s not challenging enough.”
Resistance on repeat
And as we get stronger, the weights we lift need to get heavier.
“That said, it can be challenging doing a set of five with 100 pounds (45kg), or a set of 15 with 60 pounds (27kg), or a set of 25 with 30 pounds (14kg), just as an example. As long as they are all challenging, then it doesn’t matter. You can gain the same amount of muscle doing those low-rep, moderate-rep or high-repetition ranges.”
Using dumbbells is not the only game in town, either. Resistance is resistance, Colenso-Semple stresses. “The muscle doesn’t know if I’m holding a dumbbell or a cable or if I’m on a machine. It’s all resistance. And so whatever works for you, and whatever you prefer, is what you should do.”
Strength training can include the likes of squats, lunges and push-ups – exercise that uses the body as a weight. But at a certain point extra weights such as dumbbells will need to be added to keep challenging the muscles.
Minnoch-Nuku suggests beginners start at a safe level. “It doesn’t matter where you start. If you’re a complete beginner and you’ve never used a resistance band in your life and you start using a resistance band, that is going to cause the same muscle breakdown and give you the same sore muscles as an advanced person who starts doing extra heavy lifts in the gym. The result ultimately is the same: the breakdown of muscle, the build back of muscle, the growth of lean muscle tissue.”
While free weights are often the choice of fitness pros, they can take some mastering and may not be the best choice for beginners.
“Some free weight exercises are technically challenging,” says Colenso-Semple, who is the author of multiple studies on muscle physiology. “They require time to really master the form to do properly and safely, and to make sure that you’re maintaining that form as you increase the load. So doing something like a barbell squat or a deadlift is going to take time to really do properly. And that’s not something I would ever suggest for day one in the gym.”
Resistance is resistance. The muscle doesn’t know if I’m holding a dumbbell or a cable or if I’m on a machine.
For people who’ve never lifted a weight before, the idea of stepping into a room full of heavy equipment can be daunting. Can other forms of exercise, such as Pilates or yoga offer strength benefits, too?
“Whenever we go from doing nothing to doing something, it might be beneficial and we might gain a little bit of muscle at first,” says Colenso-Semple. “So you can get resistance from doing reformer Pilates [using a Pilates machine].”
“But after that [initial phase], it’s no longer effective. And the issue with Pilates – even if you’re on the reformer and there’s some resistance attached to your wrist or your ankle – you’re always in this unstable position. And when you’re in an unstable position, you are not able to produce as much force. It might feel hard, the same way that if I’m trying to balance and do a single leg squat, that will be hard for me just with my body weight. But I’ll be able to add a lot more external load if I’m doing a regular squat. So that’s really the shortfall of Pilates and why it’s not effective for muscle growth long term.”
Turning back time
Experts stress that you’re never too old to pick up a weight.
“The kind of exciting thing about muscle is that even if you’re somebody who has never lifted weights and you are in your 60s, 70s or 80s, and you start, there are still benefits,” says Colenso-Semple. “We can still gain muscle even later in life. It might not be to the same degree as it would be in our 20s or 30s, but the benefits are there, no matter when you start.”
That was certainly the case for 72-year-old Aucklander Charmaine, who started training with weights six months ago. “I never had any [defined] muscle,” she says, “so I didn’t really notice I was losing it. But I was.”
Diagnosed with osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis, Charmaine says she wishes she’d known about the benefits of strength training decades ago.
“I would have started a long time ago. But when I was going through all that, there was nothing that said anything about strength training. It just said, ‘Do weight-bearing exercise.’ Well, weight-bearing exercise is walking.”
When she first picked up a barbell, working out alongside her husband with a personal trainer, Charmaine was daunted. “It was just 10 kilos, and the first time Kyra, my trainer, gave it to me, I’m like, ‘I can’t move. I can hold it, but I can’t move it,’” she recalls. “But now I can. I mean I’m not throwing it around or anything, but I’m definitely stronger. And I can see the muscle. I never had that before.”
She’s progressed from doing leg presses with no weight added, to an additional 60kg. And, she says, it’s made a difference to her everyday life.
“I feel stronger. I can lift up things and move them around more easily than I used to. And I think that as you get older, the critical thing is not to have a fall. So being physically strong, as well as flexible and having good balance is critical to not being injured.”
Minnoch-Nuku recommends beginners have a few sessions with an exercise professional to learn how to work with weights without being injured. But she says you don’t need to join a gym – there are home-based online workouts people can do with a small investment in equipment.
“Once you feel really comfortable with your programme or your weights and you understand progressive overload, if you’re going to continue to build and get strong, you do need to increase your weights over time but there’s no hurry. We’ve got all our whole lives ahead of us to get stronger.”
Gender games
The message that men and women need different kinds of training is popular in the fitness-influencer space. But this is overstated, says Colenso-Semple. She pushes back, saying it’s not evidence based.
“It’s a myth that women need drastically different exercise recommendations than men, and that everything changes because of the menopause transition. We have a wealth of data to support that. We know progressive, challenging resistance training works at every age, regardless of sex.”
Minnoch-Nuku, whose fitness specialty is to work with women over 40, says changes in exercise regimes might be needed at midlife if women haven’t done strength training before, which is the case for many Gen X and older women.
“When perimenopause symptoms kick in, women might feel their body composition is changing, and they can’t control it the way they did with classes, for example. They might feel like now that’s not working, and what am I doing wrong?”
They’re not doing anything wrong, she says. But while classes are beneficial – and any movement is better than no movement – it’s likely not providing enough stimulus for lean muscle tissue growth, and some more challenging weights might be needed.
I feel stronger. I can lift up things and move them around more easily than I used to.
Women who’ve grown up with a diet culture – and the extreme leanness of the body ideals it often promotes – might also still believe that weight training will make their bodies bulky, having been conditioned to strive for tone instead. It’s a common misunderstanding, says Colenso-Semple. The truth is the opposite.
“When you think about these [body] goals we have, people will use words like ‘toned’ or they’ll say, ‘I want lean lines’ or things like that. That look is actually a function of having muscle, along with a lower level of body fat.”
Aesthetics are probably bottom on the list of benefits of strength training for its fans, who find the mental boost to be really powerful.
“I think psychologically it’s very good,” says Charmaine, who now regularly does strength training in the gym twice a week for 30 minutes.
“It’s not just the physical. It’s the thinking that you’re stopping the rot. And it makes you feel a lot more optimistic about the future. I feel much more optimistic about what I can do and what I will be able to do in the future, without injuring myself.”