Resistance Training Is Your Secret Fountain Of Youth

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Welcome back , betsy , here . Thank you for being here .

As always , today we're talking about one of my favorite topics resistance training as the fountain of youth and let me tell you , I have the privilege of working with a lot of different people at a lot of different stages of life as my clients .

I have clients who are in their 60s , 70s and 80s who are living their most energetic , active , vital lives , and that is in part due to their resistance training and part and do in part to their outlook and the efforts that they make , and it's just such a privilege for me to get to watch and an incredible reminder as someone who is who , as we all will be

aging . We are all aging , no matter where you are in life , and resistance training is such a secret ingredient to the best aging process you can have .

There are lots of different goals and reasons to train and I think we get hung up on the need for aesthetic based goals or performance based goals , especially younger individuals , and one of my favorite goals and my favorite suggestions for other folks is the goal of resistance training helping you to live a full , energetic life as you age .

That's one of my goals living a full , energetic and active life as I age . I want to feel as young as possible because I credit I credit training with me feeling youthful now and I want to continue that feeling In the life cycle .

The way we have sort of life set up , at least culturally here in the United States is that you and generally kind of in other cultures maybe two we , you start your life , you're supported by someone else , your parents , you are growing up , you're learning about yourself . Then you spend your 20s , 30s , 40s , 50s working . Maybe you have children .

You give your your life to your children , you give your life to your work . You use that time and then , when it is time for you to get time for yourself , when you retire , when your children leave the nest , if that , if you chose to have children , you .

You may be too tired , you may be too broken down and and that seems backwards to me and using resistance training as the key to being able to enjoy those years , enjoy the life that waits for you , years and years to come , when you have that available time .

I see women and men in their 60s , 70s and 80s that many 20-somethings would envy for their strength , their energy and their body awareness , and I think that's an incredible thing .

What I want to do today is go through sort of the life timeline , a little bit by decades , and explain to you how putting resistance training protocols in place can help you enjoy your life more , live a more youthful life . I want you to be able to enjoy those years that are going to be easier and you can choose to defy that decline .

Now , certainly , there are lots of things that happen as our bodies age that we don't have control over . We don't have control over chronic illness or unexpected illness disease . We don't have control over life circumstances having to care for someone that we weren't planning to have to care for someone , or having to work more than we intended to .

We don't necessarily have control over circumstances like the financial limitations that may some people may not have the financial support and or resources to devote to creating their most youthful life . So I'm just saying everyone is different and everyone is going to experience life differently .

They're going to experience the aging process differently , but there are some things that we can be thinking about at different points in our life to set us up for success and to use resistance training as a tool for getting the most out of our lives .

So I'm going to go through the sort of life cycle of training and explain some reasons why you want to be training then and what you want to be using it for , so that you can harness this fountain of youth .

So in your 20s and if you've ever been in a gym , I guarantee you you don't see a lot of 20 year olds working with personal trainers , and that's because 20 year olds believe that they are indestructible and they believe they know it all .

And some of that youthful naivete is what allows young people to try new things and to push boundaries and to give us new ideas as we push forward . But as it comes to our bodies , what is forgiving at 20 isn't as forgiving later in our lives .

So what your 20s can be for your longevity is establishing that habit , establishing resistance training as something that you regularly do . It is laying the groundwork for your active life as you move forward . Habits that you build now are only going to get easier and easier and easier as you age .

Lifting and maintaining muscle mass in your 20s is easier than later . So start doing it then , and it's a great time for you to get to know your body .

The more you know about your body at a young age , the more you know about how it feels , what works , what feels like it doesn't work , what feels like it's where there are inconsistencies or asymmetries or challenges , the more you'll be able to spot when things are going awry later or when you might come up on a hiccup .

You know what your baseline is in your youthful years . You're youthful by a literal , numerical indicator , but we're going to be youthful all the way into , all the way through these decades , and that's an opportunity .

If you are lucky enough to start training in your 20s , you are setting up a great foundation and I want to encourage you and remind you that you can start at any time and you can reap the benefits of resistance training and their anti-aging capacities way into wherever you choose to start , but if you start sooner it's just easier .

There's less resistance not resistance training , resistance to establishing that habit , to learning the techniques , to learning about your body . So 30s , 40s and 50s these years where you're more established but you're busy , you're occupied , a lot of life is lifeing for you , so to speak . This is a time to build and maintain that muscle mass again .

So between the ages of 30 and 35 , without doing anything , women naturally Reach their peak muscle mass . Now , if you're training a lot and you're adding muscle mass , you can continue to add . But if you weren't to do anything , you'd be reaching your peak muscle mass . Amazing , right , you're gonna live for much .

Ideally you're going to live for much longer than 35 . So this is the time to build and maintain . Build and or maintain Muscle mass is gonna slowly decrease over that time . Your bone density is Going to stabilize , but it is not going to increase after around 25 .

So it stabilizes for a period and then we see bone to bone density begin to decrease when the bone breakdown outpaces bone formation somewhere around the 50s or sort of Around menopause . And I have the context of women in a lot of these cases , because I work with women . Men's timelines are slightly different .

But let's just say , if your bone density is kind of maintaining or decreasing , resistance training can help support that . It can stave off that decrease in bone density . 30s , 40s and 50s can be your time for preventative care . So maybe you don't feel bad yet , maybe you don't have aches and pains or maybe you're noticing them sort of start to creep up .

This is your time to take preventative , proactive action . It's your time to find balance . It's your time to be able to figure out how do I still do some of this and Accomplish all the other to-dos I have . I have competing priorities and I've spoken about that .

So and that time in your life , this might be a competing priorities time , but the great thing about resistance training and its benefits is that it has a cumulative effect . So Every drop in the bucket counts and matters .

So if right now you don't have the opportunity to work out as much as you did another time , realize that your effort and each time you show up matters and that cumulative effect is important . This is your time to get on your sleep and your nutrition . Figure some of these aspects out so you can continue to support all the things that you're doing .

And for women in 30s , 40s , 50s , maybe some for some of this stuff would would be in the 20s .

But pregnancy , childbirth and child rearing those are all Places where resistance training can help support your overall health , how you feel , your energy levels , how you your body recovers from the difficult aspects of those different life stages and then , for every everyone , menopause .

So , depending on when you experience this , it could be different for different people and the severity and each individual is going to experience it very differently .

But resistance training has been shown to improve your sleep quality , something that is challenged in through menopause improve energy , decrease for some people , the severity of their hot flashes and increase metabolic rate . Staving off some of that , what is what is feared by many of the weight gain that comes with menopause ?

So , again , you're just listing off things that can really help support this sort of building phase of being able to enter your years after work , your golden years , so to speak Is that what they call them ? I'm not sure your golden years in the best possible physical condition you can be in .

And again , like I said , you can start anytime because that cumulative effect matters , and you can start now and start to accumulate all those workouts . Great , if you . You know , the best time to have started something was 10 years ago . The second best time is now .

So then let's talk about 60s , 70s and 80s this time where we imagine individuals as less active , as oftentimes more immobile and more in pain around 65 for most women and around 70 for most men that muscle mass can decrease pretty sharply , starts to decline more sharply . This is something that you can manage , I won't say maintain .

Sometimes you can maintain it , sometimes you can manage the decline with resistance training .

Older individuals in their 60s , 70s and 80s are at greater risk for falling and then , when you fall , at greater risk for bone breakage , fractures , things like that . When you are strong and stable from resistance training , you are at . You're in a better place . You're in a better place . There are a lot of age related mobility issues .

Things like getting in and out of chairs are more difficult , getting up and down stairs is more difficult . Having to skip things because you can't get up and down the stairs or you can't get in and out of the chair without feeling uncomfortable sounds miserable .

If you laid that foundation , if you , if you work out now , I've had people who've started training at age 65 and are moving better at age 75 than they were moving at age 45 . I promise you , and if you are much younger and you're going , why would I even be thinking about that right now ?

I want to encourage you to live in this moment like you want to have this body for years and years to come . You want to have a body that you can still move .

At that time , joint aches and pains that come from that , that lack of mobility , or come from that weakness Weakness is I say it over and over again people feel like they have to stretch and stretch , and stretch . It might not be that that is need stretching , it might just be weak .

So that that is an opportunity building your strength and then you can experience less of those joint aches and pains that disrupt , that disrupt your activities of daily living and they , they disrupt your sleep and they disrupt your ability to do all the things that you want to try , that you haven't gotten to try yet .

Resistance training has been shown to have a positive effect on executive function and global cognitive function in older adults . I was going to look up because I thought there was more of a direct line with memory , but that seems to be more with cardiovascular exercise .

They do not have a significant connection and I think some of that might still be something people are looking at more closely . So I don't want to say something out of turn , but in older adults , if you're thinking about how your brain is having to work in order to solve movement problems , it's a continued challenge . And then we think about energy and outlook .

Don't you want to live a life that is full and interesting and exciting , no matter how old you are ? I do , I know I do , and let me tell you , I think there might have been a time in my life where I feared aging and knowing the people I know , who I get the privilege of working with , I'm like , oh , I'm going to be .

I tell you right now you can save this episode and we'll take the clip out . Let's see , you know , 40 years from now , and I hope I'm as vibrant and I hope I'm moving and I hope I got a few pull-ups left in me at that time . I want to wrap this up with a little story . I have a client . She just celebrated her 85th birthday .

She started training for the first time .

She was an active young woman , played softball , but started resistance training around eight years ago and she went to dinner with some friends for her 85th birthday and she hadn't seen them in a while and when they met her they needed walkers to be able to get to and from the restaurant and she did not and she's feeling like she's moving better .

She traveled this last summer and she had traveled maybe three or four summers before and had some hard falls because she would trip frequently and she didn't fall at all while she was gone and at her 85th birthday party she insisted that her friends feel her biceps .

She flexed , she's like I got some muscle here and that is just one of the most heartwarming things to me because , yes , and that's just one story among many people , many incredible people that I work with but also plenty of other people work with that that are moving , that are strong , that are deadlifting more than their body weight , that are doing pushups and

doing pull ups and able to climb and do a trail hike because they are fit enough to do it . Age is a number . Your youthful energy is a state of mind and a commitment to your active life , and I will just put a little asterisk because I always like to do that .

I'm very young and I don't want to speak out of turn for people who are aging and experiencing something . So I don't want to minimize it , but I want to say , as a person who is on the outside looking at that experience , I am in awe and I want to encourage everyone to take advantage of the benefits that come from resistance training . I feel more youthful .

My skin , my body , my energy , everything is aging backwards and I want that for you too . All right , if you've got questions about this , you want to share your own experiences or talk to me about it . I'm going to get some of my clients to come on the podcast .

I'm going to , I promise , because they have so many great stories and I want them to share their experiences with you . So listen out for that . Want to remind you of the giveaway .

If you share the podcast , either on social media or via text or email , and you just send me a screenshot of that or you tag me and social media , you're going to be entered to win one of four $15 Starbucks gift cards . You have from now until November 12th and I'm going to draw those names from all those entries .

You can enter as many times as you want on November 13th . Again , thank you as always , for listening . Reach out to me via email , betsy at bfosterstrongcom , or Instagram DM at foster underscore strength . Until next time , go build your strongest , most youthful body and I'll talk to you soon . Bye .