Long-Term Health Benefits Of Resistance Training
Hint: you’ll get more than just great aesthetics…
Resistance training has carried forth the reputation of being for meat-heads or gym rats. Building muscle to get absolutely yolked and lift as much weight as humanly possible. Of course, pushing any type of training to an extreme can create some sort of repercussions in the long run. But that’s the difference between doing it for longevity purposes and striving to perform at an elite level.
If you see working out or exercising as a way to stay healthy, maintain your youth, and keep your body physically fit to carry you forward into your later years, resistance training is one of the best ways to do so.
Aside from the obvious benefits of building lean mass and, well, getting stronger, you’ll be supporting your body’s defenses for the rest of what’s to come in your life.
5 Ways Resistance Training Improves your Long-Term Health
1. Improves retention of muscle mass as you age.
Skeletal muscle is the organ of longevity. It regulates so many of our endocrine functions such as insulin sensitivity, lowering inflammation, suppressing harmful tissue growth (ie. tumors), and improvement of cognitive function. While most see it as the part of our bodies that allows us to stand up, move, and perform certain tasks, its importance goes beyond managing our general motor abilities (1)(2).
Sarcopenia, the gradual loss of muscle mass, is one of many side effects of aging. It increases all cause-mortality in elderly adults, increases obesity, reduces your quality of life, increases the development of osteoporosis, and reduces metabolic health—mostly due to reduced ease of locomotion(3). The good news is that sarcopenia is so easily preventable and reversible too! Implementing resistance training into your day-to-day no matter your age or level of fitness will help you retain your current muscle mass and increase lean tissue density (4).
If you start training today, your body will reap its benefits for the rest of your life—if practiced on a consistent basis. If you don’t use it, you lose it!
2. Promotes bone development by increasing bone mineral density.
“Pressure creates diamonds”—and strong bones too. Another side-effect of aging is loss of bone mineral density or osteoporosis. As bones are a type of connective tissue, it makes sense that they require “training” just as your muscles do. Studies have shown that mechanical loading is one of the best ways to promote bone accretion especially as we start to age past 50. It induces a certain type of tension and stimulus in your bones that makes them grow stronger. In response to this added load, your bones become denser in order to be able to provide structural support (5).
It’s worth noting that just simply “loading your body” won’t provide the benefits of preserving your bone mineral density. A few things need to be at play here…
The load must be dynamic vs static: It can’t stay the same and you eventually need to increase the load you’re using so your body can continuously adapt to new stimuli (6).
Bones desensitize to repetitive loading so shorter bouts of effort paired with adequate rest proved to be effective in promoting bone growth (7).
The load must also provide a certain level of “strain” on the bones themselves and in different planes. For example, squatting 25% versus 100% of your body weight will produce a different level of strain. Also, performing a squat versus lateral step-up will produce a different type of strain on your bone structure (8).
How you load your body, how heavy, and in what sort of cadence will impact the level at which you benefit from the type of resistance training you do. The dose makes the prescription!
3. Increases your resting metabolic rate.
There’s often talk about “boosting your metabolism” for better health which refers to your basal metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate (both are often used interchangeably). Your BMR determines how many calories your body needs to “stay alive” at rest. Your RMR is how many calories you burn at rest for cell production, respiration, circulation, maintenance of body temperature, and nutrient processing. Your RMR is proportional to your muscle-to-fat ratio as muscular tissue demands more energy at rest for its maintenance. It will also be impacted by biological sex, age, physical activity, and hormone function. If you’re familiar with counting macros and calories, you may also relate to your RMR as your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure).
In this case, resistance training indirectly improves your resting metabolic rate by increasing your lean mass which inherently needs more energy to rebuild itself after training and maintain this newly developed tissue.
Having a higher metabolic rate is also often correlated to having a lower body fat percentage, a lower risk of heart attacks, a lower risk of diabetes, and a lower risk of hypertension (9)(10).
The next time you hear about someone wanting to “boost” their metabolism, now you know the secret lies in adding more muscle mass to your frame—through resistance training of course.
4. Prevents cognitive decline and boosts mental energy & focus.
Resistance training helps promote the release of endorphins, our “feel-good” brain chemicals. It also specifically affects brain regions associated with cognition. Training is a hormetic stressor that stimulates the release of natural growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). These hormones are primarily responsible for neuronal growth, survival, and cell differentiation—the maturing of young cells into a more specialized form. If IGF-1 and growth hormone levels increase, the rate at which cells regenerate themselves (especially in the brain!) will in turn support and enhance cognitive function (11).
While the existing evidence is minimal, it strongly suggests that a regiment of resistance training three times a week for the elderly population promotes cognitive function and ability (12)(13).
5. Lowers risk of developing chronic diseases & conditions.
When you combine all of the above, it’s no wonder that strength training has been proven to lower the risk of premature death including cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and cancer—the leading causes of death in adults aged 65 years and older.
The pharmaceutical approach to treating these diseases is through the lens of delaying their progression or recovering from them entirely. While effective at times, they tend to be aggressive which warrants undesirable side effects which can lead to a reduction of compliance to these treatments.
By no means is resistance training the “cure” to these diseases. however, it has been proven in countless cases that it can enhance your quality of life just by improving physical mobility. If you are able to move more, you’re more likely to have better circulation, you’re more likely to be able to sustain appropriate bone density, you’re more likely to preserve muscle mass, and you’re more likely to have a healthy resting metabolic rate (14).
Think of resistance training more as a preventative measure against the development of these diseases and decreases all-cause mortality. It’s a way to continue living the rest of your life with independence and confidence.
In conclusion…
Resistance training isn’t reserved for the elite, it doesn’t need to be clanging and banging heavy weights until you burst blood vessels in your eyes, it doesn’t need to be “hardcore” or “intense” in the way you’ve seen it in movies like Pumping Iron or No Pain No Gain.
Resistance training IS a one-size fits all but offers many variations, modifications, and variety for anyone and everyone that’s looking to reap its benefits.
STUDIES & CITATIONS
Iizuka K, Machida T, Hirafuji M. Skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ. J Pharmacol Sci. 2014;125(2):125-31. doi: 10.1254/jphs.14r02cp. Epub 2014 May 23. PMID: 24859778.
Hoffmann C, Weigert C. Skeletal Muscle as an Endocrine Organ: The Role of Myokines in Exercise Adaptations. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2017 Nov 1;7(11):a029793. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a029793. PMID: 28389517; PMCID: PMC5666622.
Li R, Xia J, Zhang XI, Gathirua-Mwangi WG, Guo J, Li Y, McKenzie S, Song Y. Associations of Muscle Mass and Strength with All-Cause Mortality among US Older Adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2018 Mar;50(3):458-467. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001448. PMID: 28991040; PMCID: PMC5820209.
Blocquiaux S, Gorski T, Van Roie E, Ramaekers M, Van Thienen R, Nielens H, Delecluse C, De Bock K, Thomis M. The effect of resistance training, detraining and retraining on muscle strength and power, myofibre size, satellite cells and myonuclei in older men. Exp Gerontol. 2020 May;133:110860. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2020.110860. Epub 2020 Feb 1. Erratum in: Exp Gerontol. 2020 Jun;134:110897. PMID: 32017951.
Massini DA, Nedog FH, de Oliveira TP, Almeida TAF, Santana CAA, Neiva CM, Macedo AG, Castro EA, Espada MC, Santos FJ, Pessôa Filho DM. The Effect of Resistance Training on Bone Mineral Density in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Healthcare (Basel). 2022 Jun 17;10(6):1129. doi: 10.3390/healthcare10061129. PMID: 35742181; PMCID: PMC9222380.
Lanyon LE, Rubin CT. Static vs dynamic loads as an influence on bone remodelling. J Biomech. 1984;17(12):897-905. doi: 10.1016/0021-9290(84)90003-4. PMID: 6520138.
Robling AG, Burr DB, Turner CH. Recovery periods restore mechanosensitivity to dynamically loaded bone. J Exp Biol. 2001 Oct;204(Pt 19):3389-99. doi: 10.1242/jeb.204.19.3389. PMID: 11606612.
Lanyon LE. Using functional loading to influence bone mass and architecture: objectives, mechanisms, and relationship with estrogen of the mechanically adaptive process in bone. Bone. 1996 Jan;18(1 Suppl):37S-43S. doi: 10.1016/8756-3282(95)00378-9. PMID: 8717546.
Ruggiero C, Ferrucci L. The endeavor of high maintenance homeostasis: resting metabolic rate and the legacy of longevity. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2006 May;61(5):466-71. doi: 10.1093/gerona/61.5.466. PMID: 16720742; PMCID: PMC2645618.
Westcott, Wayne L. PhD. Resistance Training is Medicine: Effects of Strength Training on Health. Current Sports Medicine Reports 11(4):p 209-216, July/August 2012. | DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8
Liu-Ambrose T, Donaldson MG. Exercise and cognition in older adults: is there a role for resistance training programmes? Br J Sports Med. 2009 Jan;43(1):25-7. doi: 10.1136/bjsm.2008.055616. Epub 2008 Nov 19. PMID: 19019904; PMCID: PMC5298919.
Yoon DH, Lee JY, Song W. Effects of Resistance Exercise Training on Cognitive Function and Physical Performance in Cognitive Frailty: A Randomized Controlled Trial. J Nutr Health Aging. 2018;22(8):944-951. doi: 10.1007/s12603-018-1090-9. PMID: 30272098.
Li Z, Peng X, Xiang W, Han J, Li K. The effect of resistance training on cognitive function in the older adults: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2018 Nov;30(11):1259-1273. doi: 10.1007/s40520-018-0998-6. Epub 2018 Jul 13. PMID: 30006762.
Mcleod JC, Stokes T, Phillips SM. Resistance Exercise Training as a Primary Countermeasure to Age-Related Chronic Disease. Front Physiol. 2019 Jun 6;10:645. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.00645. PMID: 31244666; PMCID: PMC6563593.