12 Awesome Reasons Why Strength Training Will Help You Live Longer

What’s the secret to a long and healthy life?

Lots of research recently has found that 2 full body strength-training workout a week could be the key to longevity and aging well.

Why? Because the benefits of strength training extend to every aspect of your physical, mental and emotional health.

And in terms of longevity, every workout is an investment in your future self. Isn’t it everyone’s goal to have a body free from injury, pain and disease for as long as possible, so that, even in our 80s we will still be able to do all the things we can do now (just maybe a little bit slower!)

Already lift regularly? Or need more convincing that it’s right for you?

Whatever your current relationship with weights, here are 12 strength training benefits worth celebrating.

1. Strong Muscles

Strength training involves any activity that works your muscles against resistance (why it's also called resistance training). And by stressing your muscles, it stimulates them to grow and become stronger.

It happens fast. In fact, in one 2020 study in the ‌Journal of Aging and Physical Activity‌, found that older adults significantly improved their total-body muscle strength after just 16 hour-long resistance workouts.

2. Healthy Body Fat Levels

Weightlifting for fat loss isn't just a thing — it might ‌be THE‌ thing. Strengthening your muscles has a significant effect on your body's fat cells. In a large obesity study in 2014, Harvard researchers found that, minute per minute, strength training does more to regulate age-related abdominal fat than cardio does.

How? Doing challenging weightlifting exercises triggers a temporary metabolic boost, called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. That's because your body needs extra oxygen to cool down and repair itself after weight training. What's more, over the long term, building lean muscle mass increases your resting metabolic rate, the rate at which your body burns calories even when you’re sat on the sofa!

Strength training may also support healthy body fat levels by affecting hormone levels and reducing inflammation.

3. Mental and Emotional Health

Many people first pick up weights for the physical health benefits of weightlifting, but stick with it for the mental and emotional ones. 

Research has shown that resistance training reduces the frequency and severity of depressive symptoms. And that's regardless of physical changes. It has also been shown to help in the management of anxiety too.

Strength training is great for the brain. It increases levels of feel-good chemicals (like endorphins and endocannabinoids). It also affects levels of BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor), which supports brain health and has been shown to delay the onset of certain types of dementia.

4. Self Confidence

Most people don't start out able to do great push-ups or pull-ups, but training to achieve these things and unlocking those new skills is highly motivating.  Don't be surprised if the confidence that comes with reaching new strength goals carries over into your life outside of the gym.

5. Solid Balance and Stability

Many strength-training movements require balance and mobility from your body. As you move in different planes of motion and at different angles while strength training, your major muscle groups and the smaller muscles throughout your body become stronger and more stable.  Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death in adults over 65. So feeling balanced and stable in your body becomes increasingly important as you age.

6. Ease During Acts of Daily Living

What are acts of daily living? They are common everyday tasks like showering, changing the bedding, gardening and taking the stairs.  If you have trained to deadlift a heavy kettlebell, for example, you feel much more confident — and are safer — picking up heavy shopping bags or moving furniture.  The stronger you are in your strength training workouts, the stronger you are in the real world.

7. Good Posture

Being stuck in one position all day — like sitting at your computer — weakens the stabilizer muscles in your torso, which play a major role in your posture.  Regular strength training can help to increase the endurance of the muscles in your core that are responsible for good posture, so that you will experience less lower back pain than your non-gym-going office colleagues. Resistance training has also been shown to effectively lower inflammation (which often contributes to pain) in older adults.

8. Athletic Strength

Weight training might also help you get better at your favorite non-gym activities. Sports that require a lot of short bursts of power and longer periods of endurance running benefit tremendously from strength training.

A large body of research backs this up. For example, a 2016 study in the ‌Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research‌ found that six weeks of strength training benefitted professional football players' sprinting ability. And a 2014 study in ‌Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports‌ found that 25 weeks of heavy lifting helped cyclists pedal more powerfully.

9. Strong Bones

Strength training is important both for supporting bone growth during our younger years and maintaining as much of that bone density and strength as possible as we age.

How does weight training benefit your bones? When you forcefully contract your muscles, they end up pulling on and gently stressing your bones. Plus, if you do your strength workouts from a standing position, you effectively load (and again, gently stress) your spine, hips and leg bones.

10. Balanced Blood Sugar Levels

People with moderate levels of muscle strength have a 32 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those with low levels of muscle strength, according to research by the ‌Mayo Clinic.‌

Plus, in people who have diabetes, strength training is an effective way to manage blood sugar and reduce the risk of complications.

Researchers think resistance training has this effect by helping to regulate body composition and sensitivity to the sugar-regulating hormone insulin.

11. A Healthy Heart

Though cardio has long gotten all of the heart-health glory, more and more research shows that resistance training deserves some credit too.

For example, Research in ‌Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise,‌ found that  women who reported doing any kind of strength training had a 17 percent lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease than those who reported that they had never strength trained.

12. Healthier Skin

The benefits of weight training are aesthetic in more ways than one: Lifting weights may increase your skin elasticity and dermal thickness, which can help you look younger.  A small study in June 2023, conducted with middle-aged Japanese women, found that both aerobic exercise and resistance training improved blood flow to the skin which improved elasticity and clarity.

Together, all of these health benefits of strength training can add up to a longer, and better quality of, life.

Being able to move like we do in class is such a privilege. So the next time a class feels hard work or you are thinking of skipping a session, remember that we are lucky to have the bodies we have and every workout (no matter how small) is an investment in your future self - it is our goal that at 80yrs old we will still be strong enough to burpee ourselves up from the floor!