By Women should lift weights — no matter how old
Keeping yourself healthy throughout your lifetime is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.
I often say how I wish weight training had been part of my youth.
Who knows what beautiful effects may have manifested — not to mention how I would have benefited knowing the number of niggling health issues.
Why weight training?
Weight training is and will always be my preferred exercise choice because of the many benefits surpassing cardio.
Now, that’s not to say you should not do any cardio.
For example, I walk many kilometres daily. However, low-impact cardio is excellent for maintaining your cardiovascular & mental health.
As women age, we lose our muscle mass and bone density. Plus, our metabolism also takes a hit.
Unfortunately, when menopause hits, our bone density starts to diminish.
As a result, frailty beings to take place.
Here’s how women benefit from weight training
To show you how beneficial training is for older women, I wanted to highlight a study that looked into 46 women across two age groups.
One from 60–70 and 75–90. Researchers wanted to uncover how physical activity affects the frailty of these different brackets.
One of the essential findings indicated a more significant difference in muscle, strength and endurance among those who were physically active.
The younger group’s strength and endurance were much better than the older groups. It was attributed to the younger group’s significant gain in them because of the age.
Regarding mobility, the gap was also large between the two age groups but disappeared if they did a high level of physical activity.
One other surprising find was that the age group of 60–74 were just not exercising enough. Instead, their primary activity was gardening, housework and some stretching.
Why was this occurring in the older generation?
Committing to regular exercise within that age group is not a standard part of an older women’s lifestyle and is a reactive behaviour after an illness or fall.
This is very disappointing to hear — who set the standard for this limiting belief?
Older women need to move past this silly insinuation and consult a trainer to help them develop a regular strength training regime that challenges them as they become stronger and more mobile.
Building up endurance and stamina is very important.
Women who build up muscle strength early are much more likely to ward off the detrimental effects of ageing. This is because fragility progresses slowly with age and causes us to become less and less mobile.
Training changes all of that.
It’s never too late to start training — but the earlier you start, the better it is.
It would be best if you kept building up upon what you have and exercising regularly.
Your exercise and lifestyle habits should be as significant as eating nourishing foods.
So ladies, think about this study for a moment and contemplate what kind of lifestyle you want as you age.
False stigmas of what older women should and should not be doing are holding you back from being at your best.
It’s time to stop listening to the naysayers and take the health of your body into your own hands.
I’d love to know about your exercise journey. Please mention what you have done to encourage more and more older women to take the plunge.
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