"AS YOU GET OLDER YOUR BODY EXPERIENCES A DECLINE IN YOUR TOTAL BODY WATER, AND YOUR CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE THAT IS FOUND WITHIN YOUR JOINTS AND OTHER PLACES, LOSES THEIR ELASTICITY AND PLIABILITY," SAYS SPORT SCIENTIST CHÉRIEN ROUX.
According to Roux, as one gets older, this can lead to a general decline in body weight and cell mass. "Resistance training helps maintain your cartilage and connective tissues’ elasticity and pliability, adding protection to your joints. This is merely one benefit of resistance training for people over the age of 60," she says, pointing out that the ACSM (American College of Sport Medicine) also lists the following benefits, squashing the misconception that some people have that people over the age of 60 should not perform any resistance training:
MUSCULAR FITNESS:
Resistance training has been shown to improve all the components of muscular fitness. Muscular fitness is not limited to only muscular strength, but also muscular endurance and muscular power. Enhanced muscular fitness has many benefits for all, but with people over the age of 60 muscular fitness decreases the risk of all-cause mortality.
HEALTH-RELATED BIOMARKERS:
Resistance training has also shown to improve people’s overall body composition and their health-related biomarkers (an individual’s blood glucose levels and blood pressure). Performing resistance training can decrease a person’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, as it improves people’s glycemic control and insulin sensitivity, while people with mild hypertension have shown improvements of blood pressure levels.
GENERAL HEALTH BENEFITS:
Resistance training also provides general health benefits to people over the age of 60, and plays an important role in the improvement of the quality of daily living. Recovering from broken bones and muscle sprains becomes more difficult with age. Resistance training reduces the risk of falls by improving balance and coordination, and also reduces the severity of the impact of a fall. Resistance training helps people maintain a healthy body weight and improves their overall physical functioning, reducing issues such as back pain. Mental health benefits include the management of conditions such as dementia and anxiety. ACSM refers to a “more favourable cardiovascular risk profile” as the benefit whereby resistance training decreases the onset of cardiovascular diseases and the maintenance of an underlying cardiovascular problem. Finally, resistance training also increases a person’s bone density. This is especially important to people over the age of 60, when deterioration of bone density can lead to severe injury. Postmenopausal women experience a larger loss of strength, muscle mass and bone density than men due to their hormonal changes, increasing their need for resistance training.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW EXERCISE CAN POSITIVELY INFLUENCE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
EVIDENCE FROM A STUDY:
A study was conducted by Figueroa & colleagues (2011), whereby 24 postmenopausal women between the ages of 47 and 68, engaged in resistance and endurance exercise for a period of 12 weeks. Within the study they evaluated these women’s arterial stiffness in their ankles, their blood pressure and muscular strength. These women were divided into two groups, the control group and the treatment group (who engaged in resistance and endurance exercise). The results showed that the women in the treatment group had a “significantly better ankle blood flow, a lower mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure and greater dynamic leg strength and isometric handgrip strength than the control group. These results indicated favourable outcomes of resistance training on the risks factors involving hypertension and frailty in postmenopausal women.
*SOURCE: American College of Sports Medicine, 2018. Resources for the Exercise Physiologist. 2nd Edition ed. Philadelphia(Pennsylvania): Wolters Kluwer.