pattybirk | Tue February 23, 2010
Do you have a program or routine to follow for this specific group? These are my clients! Patty
Why Older People Should Do Weight Training?
June 20 2008
If you think you are getting old, you better read it. If you think age is just a number, I would recommend you to read (just in case).
What is the problem?
It has been pretty much established that there is a 1-2% decline in your muscle mass beginning in your fourth decade. This loss of muscle with aging was such an important finding that they even came up with a pet name for this phenomenon – they called it “sarcopenia”.
So why is muscle loss a problem with age?
The loss of muscle with age has been associated with a number of health problems:
Functional independence: Most of your day-to-day activities are dependent on your physical strength. Ironically, strength is exactly what you lose as you get older. Your strength and power are directly proportional to the muscle mass you carry. So the less muscle you have, the less you move around(or function) without others help. Makes sense?
Falls would come under this category too. Falls in the elderly results in a sharp decline in functional independence and overall quality of life. Again reminds us of the significance of maintaining your strength and muscle with age.
Bone density: This one is pretty clear. Your bone strength and density is highly depended on your muscle mass (and strength).
Obesity:Muscle mass is said to be the largest contributor to your resting metabolic rate (the amount of calories you burn doing nothing). Now I partly see why people find it harder to stay lean or keep the weight off as they get older.
Critical Illness: Loss of muscle mass is a major problem for people suffering from critical illness like cancer, traumatic injury, burns and so on. There seems to be more than a doubling of protein needs in these folks. And folks with limited reserves of muscle seem to respond pretty poorly to these stresses (even to the extent to affect survival).
Figure: A model of the age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) and how it effects daily function. The reduced physical activty further worsens muscle loss through a postive feedback loop.
So how do I increase my muscle mass?
Good question. The best and the simplest way to increase muscle mass is by weight training.
What are the other benefits of weight training?
There are other benefits of resistance training which are less talked about:
Diabetes: Improvement in insulin sensitivity was always believed to be only effectively possible through endurance exercise. Now, number of studies have shown improvements in blood glucose control with weight training. In fact, a recent head to head comparison of weight training and endurance training showed weight training to be more effective in improving glucose control than endurance exercise. Also, improvements in blood lipid profile were only seen in the strength training group which made the researchers to conclude weight training to be an important intervention for diabetes.
Blood Pressure: Recent studies have clearly shown weight training to be effective in lowering blood pressure. There is some debate about the increase in arterial stiffness (could be bad) with resistance training, but the research is not really conclusive.
Depression and Sleep disorders: Weight training has been shown to alleviate depression symptoms and improved sleep. Both of these problems are pretty relevant to elderly.
Sub-maximal Endurance: The increase in sub-maximal endurance is generally a sought out benefit of walking, jogging and running. Weight training has also shown to improve sub-maximal endurance to a similar extent, if not more. There have been some concerns over weight training attenuating endurance training adaptations. But this has been disproven by quite a few studies which showed no loss of endurance adaptations when strength training is combined with endurance training.
Conclusion
Considering the potential benefits of weight training in improving function, reducing chronic diseases, increasing strength and muscle mass, and even improving endurance capacity, weight training could be better than aerobic exercise, particularly for the elderly.
Anyway, to make a long story short, weight training is good for you, and is now shown to be even better if you are older.
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