Exercise for Healthspan: Strength & Size

Exercising for Healthspan, Muscle Size & Strength, Are you Lifting?

Within an overall & comprehensive approach to exercising for a healthy lifespan it feels almost redundant to make a case for exercise to improve muscle size and strength. 

🏋️‍♀️Gyms have long-evolved from iron-filled dungeons to become far more welcoming places for more people

📈Gym membership is growing year on year.

🏋️‍♂️More people are lifting weights than ever. 

Yet it is not redundant. Most people are still not lifting weights. Nor doing any other form of developmental resistance exercise. This means not only are they not getting the positive benefits of resistance exercise, they are also incurring the near certainty of losing muscle (sarcopenia) & bone health & the risk of this developing into osteopenia and osteoporosis. Avoidable loss & avoidable risk.

🚶‍♀️Walking more is fantastic. Zone 2 exercise is good. Balance & mobility are very important. Yet nothing substitutes for the enormous benefits of resistance exercise.

Whilst an athlete specifically needing to prioritse strength or size could & would train differently, for non-elite athletes these are so strongly correlated & their developmental exercises so similar, they can be bundled together.

💪So the case, to anyone considering but not already incorporating progressive resistance exercise, includes:

Reduced all-cause mortality - including reduced risk of some cancers, diabetes & dementias

Muscle reserve - the more you build the stronger base you have to maintain & gradually decline from

Insulin Sensitivity - there is no more potent way to support insulin sensitivity than to have larger healthy muscles, acting as a huge and active reservoir for glucose

Active endocrine organ - muscles secrete myokines which circulate & exert a poweful anti-inflammatory effect, system wide

Reduced risk of slips, trips & falls AND reduced risk of worse outcomes if you do thanks to muscle providing insulation for bones on impact

More quality of life now & later . . . unlike some health interventions where the payoff is in the future & uncertain, stronger, larger muscles improve your functionality right now, & for the rest of your life

Gym bro’s have it right on this. You gotta lift! 💪 It is never too late to start & there are many ways to do it, one does not have to use a commercial gym.

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