When most people picture "strength training," they envision something loud: clanking plates, mirrors, power lifters grunting through a deadlift, blasting music. It's easy to assume it's not for you — especially if you're not trying to look like a body builder but are just trying to garden without your back seizing up, go for a walk without hip pain, or hoist your luggage into the overhead bin when you travel.
But what many of us imagine strength training to be is misleading. Strength training isn't about looking a certain way, and it doesn’t have to happen at the gym. It's about signaling to your body, consistently, that strength is still needed — and your body listens. “Use it or lose it” applies to your muscles as much as it does to anything else.
Muscle loss with age (sarcopenia) begins sooner than you’d expect. After around age 30, the average adult loses a meaningful percentage of muscle mass per decade, and that rate speeds up after 60. But there's a quieter, faster decline happening underneath that one: power. Power is how quickly you can produce force, and it drops even faster than raw strength as we age – often by twice the rate. It's power, not just strength, that lets you catch yourself when you trip, push up out of a low chair in one motion, or step quickly onto a curb before a car turns.
Muscle mass, strength, and power together are some of the strongest predictors of whether someone can live independently in their later years — stronger predictors, in many studies, than cardiovascular fitness alone (like the kind you get from walking).
Here’s the takehome message: If we do nothing, muscle mass, strength, and power decline as we age (starting in our 30’s!)... and you have the power to change this trajectory, at any age – to take care of your body, preserve your independence, and feel your best so you can do what you love.
Building and preserving muscle, and training it to fire quickly, requires loading it and moving it with some speed at times. This is exactly what we do every Friday at 9 am in RISE: a group class focused on building strength, power, cognitive function, and balance, using body weight and resistance band exercises designed for the body you have right now.
Here’s to longtime strength, power, and independence.
