Forget bowling or gentle swimming: Retirees should take up weight lifting if they want a healthy retirement, research suggests.
Resistance training was found to have strength benefits that lasted years after retirement, making it an ideal exercise for older people.
People naturally lose muscle function as they age and lack of grip and leg strength is considered a strong predictor of death in older people.
Resistance training, which can include dumbbells, body weight, or resistance bands, has been shown to help prevent this from happening.
The researchers wanted to explore the long-term effects of a year-long supervised resistance training program using heavy weights.
People naturally lose muscle function as they age and lack of grip and leg strength is considered a strong predictor of death in older people. Resistance training, which can include dumbbells, body weight, or resistance bands, has been shown to help prevent this from happening.
With participants with an average age of 71, 451 retirees were divided into one-year groups of intense resistance training, moderate-intensity training, or no additional exercise in addition to their usual activity.
Those with assigned weight participated in programs three times a week, while moderate-intensity training performed circuits that included bodyweight exercises and resistance bands during the same period.
Each exercise in the heavy weight group involved three sets of six to 12 repetitions, between 70 and 85 percent of the maximum weight the person could lift, for each repetition.
The researchers wanted to explore the long-term effects of a year-long supervised resistance training program using heavy weights. But bodyweight resistance training can be just as effective as exercise.
Bone and muscle strength and body fat levels were measured at the start of the research and then again after one, two and four years.
At four years, those in the heavy weight group were found to have maintained their leg strength over time, while those who did not exercise or exercised at moderate intensity had lost strength.
Writing in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, researchers concluded: “In well-functioning older adults of retirement age, a year of intense resistance training can induce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.”
There were no differences between the three groups in leg extensor power: the ability to press a pedal as hard and fast as possible; hand grip strength (a measure of overall strength) and leg lean mass (weight minus body fat), with decreases in all of them.
Writing in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, researchers concluded: “In well-functioning older adults of retirement age, a year of intense resistance training can induce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.”
Levels of visceral fat, which is stored internally around organs, increased in those who did not exercise, while remaining the same in the two exercise groups.
The authors, including those from the University of Copenhagen, said people in the study were generally more active, logging an average of almost 10,000 steps per day, than the general population.
They added: ‘This study provides evidence that heavy resistance training at retirement age can have long-term effects over several years.
“Therefore, the results provide means for professionals and policy makers to encourage older people to undertake intense resistance training.”
