"Progressive Resistance Training" is the best way to build and preserve muscle and strength. Resistance training is another way of saying strength training. It means that you move your muscles against "resistance", that is by pushing against something like an exercise machine or by lifting a weight. This type of training needs to be done regularly and muscles need progressive resistance to grow. Progressive means that over time you increase the weight that you are lifting or pushing to keep getting stronger.
For example, let's assume you are a 65-year-old woman who has not exercised in a long time. You start an exercise program where you lift a 2-pound weight 10 times in a row, three days a week for a few weeks. Your arms will start to get stronger. After a few weeks, the exercise will get easier. Your muscles are ready to do more. Now you can increase the weights a bit to force your muscles to do even more and become stronger. Try moving to 3 or 4 pounds and lift them 10 times in a row. Then, when lifting 3 or 4 pounds becomes easy, you can increase the weight again. This is how you get stronger over time.
Sometimes I talk to people who exercise regularly who they tell me that they are still using the same light weights that they started with. Lifting a 2-pound weight 3 times a week for 6 months is exercise and it's better than doing nothing, but it's not strength training. At the end of 6 months, your muscles can still only lift 2 pounds. To gain strength we need to force our muscles to do more and more over time.
There are some limits to how strong you can get; you probably won't start out lifting 2 pounds and build up to 50 pounds, but you might get to 5 or 10 pounds. I will give more details on the page called the Language of Strength Training.
In an ideal world, we would all live near a clean, friendly gym and work out with a trainer who is experienced in teaching strength training to older adults. If you have a fitness center nearby, don't be afraid to try it out. If you are lucky you may have a senior-focused gym nearby. I will be discussing some of those programs in a few weeks. If you don't have a special senior exercise program nearby, don't be afraid to try a regular fitness center. Take a friend and see what they have. And also take a look at the page on this website called SilverSneakers to see if your Medicare health plan might pay for your fitness center membership.
But you may not have a fitness center nearby or it may be too difficult or expensive for you to go to a gym. Luckily there are strength training exercises that you can do at home, or at a local park, or senior center. Check out some suggestions in the next paragraph and under the Programs and Things headings on this site.
To get started with strength training at home, look at the Geri-Fit strength training programs here under Programs. You can buy Geri-Fit DVDs to use at home. And look at the information on Resistance Bands page of this website for a link to a video about strength training with bands. You might also take a look at a website called
ElderGym.com written by a physical therapist named Doug Schrift that demonstrates many strength training exercises.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published a free book about strength training for older adults. Now, I will warn you that it is wordy, perhaps they hired the same people who write the tax code to write the book. But it does have some helpful information. You can download a copy here.
For example, let's assume you are a 65-year-old woman who has not exercised in a long time. You start an exercise program where you lift a 2-pound weight 10 times in a row, three days a week for a few weeks. Your arms will start to get stronger. After a few weeks, the exercise will get easier. Your muscles are ready to do more. Now you can increase the weights a bit to force your muscles to do even more and become stronger. Try moving to 3 or 4 pounds and lift them 10 times in a row. Then, when lifting 3 or 4 pounds becomes easy, you can increase the weight again. This is how you get stronger over time.
Sometimes I talk to people who exercise regularly who they tell me that they are still using the same light weights that they started with. Lifting a 2-pound weight 3 times a week for 6 months is exercise and it's better than doing nothing, but it's not strength training. At the end of 6 months, your muscles can still only lift 2 pounds. To gain strength we need to force our muscles to do more and more over time.
There are some limits to how strong you can get; you probably won't start out lifting 2 pounds and build up to 50 pounds, but you might get to 5 or 10 pounds. I will give more details on the page called the Language of Strength Training.
In an ideal world, we would all live near a clean, friendly gym and work out with a trainer who is experienced in teaching strength training to older adults. If you have a fitness center nearby, don't be afraid to try it out. If you are lucky you may have a senior-focused gym nearby. I will be discussing some of those programs in a few weeks. If you don't have a special senior exercise program nearby, don't be afraid to try a regular fitness center. Take a friend and see what they have. And also take a look at the page on this website called SilverSneakers to see if your Medicare health plan might pay for your fitness center membership.
But you may not have a fitness center nearby or it may be too difficult or expensive for you to go to a gym. Luckily there are strength training exercises that you can do at home, or at a local park, or senior center. Check out some suggestions in the next paragraph and under the Programs and Things headings on this site.
To get started with strength training at home, look at the Geri-Fit strength training programs here under Programs. You can buy Geri-Fit DVDs to use at home. And look at the information on Resistance Bands page of this website for a link to a video about strength training with bands. You might also take a look at a website called
ElderGym.com written by a physical therapist named Doug Schrift that demonstrates many strength training exercises.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published a free book about strength training for older adults. Now, I will warn you that it is wordy, perhaps they hired the same people who write the tax code to write the book. But it does have some helpful information. You can download a copy here.