Forget lawn bowls or a gentle swim – pensioners should take up weightlifting if they want a healthy retirement, research suggests.
Resistance training was found to have strength benefits that lasted years into retirement, making it an ideal exercise for the elderly.
People naturally lose muscle function as they get older with faltering grip and leg strength viewed as a strong predictor of death in elderly people.
Resistance training, which can involve weights, body weight or resistance bands, has been shown to help prevent this from happening.
Researchers wanted to explore the long-term effects of a one-year supervised resistance training programme, using heavy weights.
People naturally lose muscle function as they get older with faltering grip and leg strength viewed as a strong predictor of death in elderly people. Resistance training, which can involve weights, body weight or resistance bands, has been shown to help prevent this from happening
With participants averaging the age of 71, 451 retirees were split into groups of either a year of heavy resistance training, moderate-intensity training or of no additional exercise on top of their usual activity.
Those assigned weights took part in programmes three times a week, while the moderate intensity training did circuits including body weight exercises and resistance bands for the same period.
Each exercise in the heavy weights group involved three sets of six to 12 repetitions, at between 70 per cent and 85 per cent of the maximum weight the person could lift, for each repetition.
Researchers wanted to explore the long-term effects of a one-year supervised resistance training programme, using heavy weights. But body-weight resistance training can be equally effective as a workout
Bone and muscle strength and levels of body fat were measured at the start of the research and then again after one, two, and four years.
At the four-year mark, those in the heavy weights group were found to have maintained their leg strength over time, while those doing no exercise or at moderate intensity had lost strength.
Writing in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, the researchers concluded: ‘In well-functioning older adults at retirement age, one year of heavy resistance training may induce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.’
There was no difference among the three groups in leg extensor power – the ability to kick a pedal as hard and as fast as possible; handgrip strength (a measure of overall strength), and lean leg mass (weight minus body fat), with decreases in all of these.
Writing in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, the researchers concluded: ‘In well-functioning older adults at retirement age, one year of heavy resistance training may induce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.’
Levels of visceral fat – which is stored internally around organs – increased in those who didn’t exercise while staying the same in the two exercise groups.
The authors, including from the University of Copenhagen, said people in the study were generally more active, clocking up an average of nearly 10,000 steps a day, than the wider population.
They added: ‘This study provides evidence that resistance training with heavy loads at retirement age can have long-term effects over several years.
‘The results, therefore, provide means for practitioners and policy-makers to encourage older individuals to engage in heavy resistance training.’
Source: Mail Online
