Why Weight Training Is Important Over 50

Why weight training is important over 50

The average life span of a man is right around 80 years old. So those of us over 50 are on the downhill side of life, but we don’t have to live like it. We can live like we are still on top of the hill.

Have you ever said, you wished you knew what you know now, when you were younger? While we can’t go back in time, we can regain some of that youthfulness we once had and weight training plays an important role in accomplishing this.

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It even creates changes in our bodies at a cellular level. They did a study on a group of healthy older people with an average age of 68 they were active but didn’t weight train. And they compared them to a younger group around the age of 24 these ones were considered sedentary, but some did participate in recreational activities.

One of the things they looked for is differing gene expressions. A gene expression basically determines what a cell does and with age, it can become degraded negatively affecting cell function.

What they found was 596 that were differently expressed between the two groups, but this changed after only six months of weight training. With 179 of them reversing back, matching the younger age profile. This is a full 30% improvement in a relatively short period of time.

There is one other thing that they noticed mitochondrial dysfunction began to reverse too. This is important as the mitochondria is what produces the energy for our cells to function.

Weight training has been shown to improve our hormone profile increasing our growth hormone and testosterone and not just post-workout, but permanently in as little as 12 weeks of consistent training. In another video, I talked about a study that looked at fit men in their sixties and it found that their testosterone levels were higher than the average man walking the street.

Insulin is another hormone that progressive resistance training can improve. They did a study on a group of older men with type 2 diabetes. These men were assigned full-body workouts to be done twice a week for 16 weeks and after this time their insulin sensitivity improved by over 46%.

Osteoporosis is an age-related disease that is so connected to muscle loss or sarcopenia that they have coined a new word by combining both names. Osteosarcopenia is the name they use to describe someone with both conditions.

Once again progressive resistance training is the best way to protect us from bone loss and weakness. With the current recommendations for building our bone mass having our training in the range of 70 to 80 percent of our one rep max which puts us in the 8 to 15 rep range.

Sleep is another way exercise helps us, but to take full advantage of its benefits, it is best to not work out right before bed.

I read an interesting article on a study about sleep and exercise. It found the benefits of exercise on sleep didn’t happen right away. They took a group of people with insomnia 55 years of age and older who didn’t exercise regularly and put them on a regular exercise program. For the first 2 months their sleep didn’t improve, but by 16 weeks in they were sleeping almost an hour and a half more every night.

While it should go without saying, progressive weight training builds muscle at a time in life when statistically we lose over 8% of our muscle mass every 10 years it is nice to be bucking the trend and building muscle instead. Because you can get fit and build muscle at any age.

This muscle mass not only helps keep our bodies looking youthful, but it also gives us strength which protects us from old age type injuries like falls due to instability.

When a person is trying to lose weight if they are doing it through diet exclusively then they will lose some muscle mass as well. The only way to stop this is through weight training.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000465

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6279907/

http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/effects-of-resistance-training-on-insulin-sensitivity/#:~:text=Resistance%20training%20resulted%20in%2016,and%20300ms%20were%20also%20observed.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0047637489900997?via%3Dihub

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sleep-newzzz/201309/better-sleep-found-exercising-regular-basis-0