Five significant advantages for women aged fifty and above to incorporate weightlifting into their fitness routines:
Weight Training Offers Significant Health Benefits for Women Over 50
Weight training is a powerful tool for promoting health and well-being in women over the age of 50. A comprehensive study, led by Dr. Amanda Hagstrom, an exercise science lecturer at UNSW Medicine & Health, has revealed that weight training offers numerous benefits, including the prevention of age-related muscle loss, improved bone density, enhanced metabolic health, better balance, and mental health improvements.
One of the key benefits of weight training for women over 50 is the prevention of muscle loss, or sarcopenia, a natural decline in muscle mass that occurs after the age of 30. This decline accelerates after 60, but weight training stimulates muscle repair and growth, helping maintain or even increase muscle mass despite this natural decline.
Another significant benefit is the improvement of bone health. Women face accelerated bone density loss postmenopause due to drops in estrogen, but weight training can counter this by stimulating bone-building cells, reducing the risk of osteoporosis.
Weight training also improves metabolic health. As estrogen declines during menopause, women tend to gain fat around the midsection and become more insulin resistant, increasing the risk for diabetes and heart disease. Resistance training effectively combats these changes by building muscle and boosting metabolism.
Strengthening muscles and joints through weight training also improves stability, reducing the risk of falls and aiding with daily activities like walking and carrying groceries. Additionally, weight training supports better mood, reduces anxiety and depression symptoms, improves sleep, and may reduce dementia risk.
While men over 50 also experience muscle loss and bone density decline with age, women may derive particular benefits in bone density preservation and metabolic regulation due to menopausal hormonal changes. For both sexes, strength training supports physical independence, metabolic health, and mental wellbeing significantly after 50.
In the study, women were found to achieve similar relative muscle size gains and increased upper body strength as men through resistance training. However, women should aim for higher overall exercise volumes in resistance training to improve relative and absolute lower body strength. Older men tend to benefit from higher intensity resistance training programs for enhanced absolute upper and lower body strength.
In conclusion, weight training is highly beneficial for both women and men over 50, offering a range of physical and mental health benefits. For women, the benefits of weight training are based on their body size, not their sex. The study consolidated results from 30 resistance training studies involving over 1400 participants, specifically comparing the results of men and women over the age of 50. The benefits of weight training are not limited to men, and include the management of weight, sharpening thinking and learning skills, and reducing symptoms of chronic conditions like arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease.
Weight training, being a part of health-and-wellness, plays a crucial role in addressing women's health concerns, such as maintaining muscle mass and combating sarcopenia. Furthermore, this fitness-and-exercise activity, when integrated into a routine, promotes not only physical health improvements, such as the prevention of age-related bone loss, but also mental well-being, diminishing symptoms of anxiety and depression, and potentially lowering dementia risk.
