Lift Weights and Run

Want to live longer? Lift weights. At least that's the gravamen of this article. According to a research team at Indiana University there's a link between strength, muscle mass, and mortality, although mass isn't as important as strength.

The team assessed 4,440 adults ages 50 or up who had their strength and muscle mass assessed between 1999 and 2002. The researchers checked back in 2011 to see who had died.

The results, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, found that those with low muscle strength were more than twice as likely to have died during the follow-up period than those with normal muscle strength. In contrast, having low muscle mass didn’t seem to matter as much.

This may seem counterintuitive but it's common for individuals to have good strength levels without having bulging muscles. You can get details of the study at the link, but even though strength is more important than mass....

That doesn’t mean you can afford to let your muscle melt away as you age; having a good reserve of muscle mass may be important, for example, if you end up having to spend time in the hospital at some point. But it’s good news for those of us who struggle to put on muscle but persist in slogging through a reasonable number of pull-ups and other strength exercises.

A second study reinforced the idea that we should get at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week, but also suggested that the weekly workouts should include some sort of strength-building exercise at least twice. The benefits not only improve the quality of one's life but also extend it.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Researchers in Australia analyzed data from 80,000 adults in England and Scotland who completed surveys about their physical activity patterns starting in the 1990s. The headline result was that those who reported doing any strength training were 23 percent less likely to die during the study period and 31 percent less likely to die of cancer.

Meeting the guidelines by strength training twice a week offered a little extra benefit.

One interesting detail: Strength training in a gym and doing bodyweight exercises seemed to confer roughly equivalent benefits. So you don’t necessarily need to heave around large quantities of iron.

In this particular cohort .... the best outcomes of all—a 29 percent reduction in mortality risk during the study—accrued to those who met both the aerobic and strength-training guidelines.

These studies should be of interest to anyone who works in the health and/or fitness industries or who works with older people. Get in the gym and get with a personal trainer who will push you to develop more strength and get more aerobic exercise.