CHAPTER TWELVE

RESISTANCE TRAINING—A BETTER WAY TO EXERCISE

Let us take a moment to recap what we have observed thus far. We note that exercise is always (in as much as movement is involved) a source of wear and tear (which is a bad thing). We also know that exercise can bring punishing amounts of force to the body (which is also a bad thing). And, to top it all off, exercise may have little to no effect upon the practitioner (a genetic thing). But we also know that if we don’t do something to preserve our muscular function then we will lose it and, given that the life expectancy of our species is increasing, we don’t want to spend the majority of our senior years with decreased functional ability, nor do we wish to suffer from the various health problems that attend a progressive loss of muscle mass.

Many of our species’ health problems stem from the loss (over time) of our Fast-Twitch muscle fibers—the ones that store the most glycogen, and thus, the ones that have a direct bearing on issues such as type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and cardiovascular disease. And while various forms of exercise can activate these fibers, the scientific research has concluded that only one type of exercise has emerged as being the safest and most beneficial way to engage them, and that exercise is resistance training.

THE CASE FOR RESISTANCE TRAINING

A 2006 article in the Canadian Medical Association (C.M.A.) Journal reported on a review of all of the evidence regarding the benefits of all forms of exercise. The researchers concluded that resistance training represented a:

paradigm shift . . . people with high levels of muscular strength have fewer functional limitations and lower incidences of chronic diseases such as diabetes, stroke, arthritis, coronary artery disease and pulmonary disorders . . . Musculoskeletal fitness is positively associated with functional independence, mobility, glucose homeostasis, bone health, psychological well being and overall quality of life and is negatively associated with the risk of falls, illness and premature death.¹

Apart from the benefits the C.M.A. indicated above, resistance training is also the exercise of choice for the individual who has let go of such notions as “super health” and “miraculous transformations” and simply wants to achieve a realistic standard of fitness and muscular strength for him or herself that is both safe and sustainable. Resistance training engages one’s muscles in a manner that involves as many metabolic pathways as possible, it requires the outputting of large amounts of energy when performed properly, and, at times, trips the growth and repair mechanism of the body into motion (I say “at times,” as there is a genetic limit to one’s ability to grow muscle), resulting in the individual trainee becoming stronger, healthier, and able to engage in enjoyable life activities that may not have been an option when the individual was weaker and less capable.

While other forms of exercise can also accomplish this objective (exercises such as running, cycling, swimming, gymnastics, rowing, and cross-country skiing come to mind), some of them (particularly in the case of running and cycling) only involve the muscles and metabolic pathways of the lower extremities. In addition, all of the activities mentioned bring a lot of wear and tear to one’s body and require a considerable time investment. When the additional factor of safety is taken into consideration, resistance training emerges as, quite simply, the most rational choice when choosing an exercise modality. In a blog posted on his website (www.drmcguff.com) Doug McGuff, MD, indicated that proper resistance training delivered the following benefits to trainees:

1. It reverses age-related gene expression.
2. It increases Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) elevations (an important mediator of improving brain functioning), which staves off or reverses age-related cognitive decline and dementia.
3. It increases gut motility, which correlates with muscle mass. One’s risk of gastrointestinal cancer inversely correlates with gut motility.
4. It further plays a role in increasing internal organ mass (organ mass also correlates with muscle mass). If you should get in an accident or severely burn yourself, the time you have in the ICU before you die is correlated with organ mass. More muscle gives you more time on the clock.
5. If you were to get in a car accident, the kind of conditioning that strength training gives you may be the difference between three days of whiplash symptoms and a lifetime in a wheelchair (which will be a shortened lifetime).
6. High-intensity training enacts a hormonal cascade that is the antithesis of the metabolic syndrome, thus helping to stave off high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and obesity.
7. Enhances nitric oxide synthetase: you will have good blood pressure and will never need the little blue pill. You will not need to worry about “being healthy enough for sexual activity.”
8. Bone mineral density correlates with muscle mass. Even in osteopenia, strong muscles absorb forces and prevent fractures.
9. Increases your basal metabolism and hormonal profile, which helps to fight obesity.
10. You just look and feel good.

There is even evidence that having more muscle and strength will help to stave off cancer.² So the “deal or no deal” question is this: Are you willing to tolerate no more than nine to 12 minutes of high-energy output activity once every seven to 10 days if there was a chance that doing so would result in your becoming stronger, moving better, feeling better, maintaining or improving your health, adding some muscle, and reducing your present level of body fat? Wouldn’t that be a “deal” worth taking, particularly when compared to the other health and fitness options that are offered the general public that are long on hype but short on results? To top it off, resistance training does not require a lot of time out of your weekly schedule, which, as a minimalist in such matters, should broaden its appeal for being the exercise of choice considerably.

I am of course aware that most people have their favorite exercise activity, and I personally would never stand in the way of anybody exercising in the manner that they so choose, but if one truly believes that one’s time on this earth is limited and finite, then it follows that one should want to have as much of it available as possible in order to enjoy all that life has to offer. And if one accepts this premise, it further follows that one should spend no more time engaged in exercise than is minimally required to achieve as many of the benefits as possible from what exercise might provide. I would further ask you to consider this—from cardiovascular fitness³, ⁴ to muscular strength, to endurance, to flexibility, to the prevention of and rehabilitation from injury, to the relief of mental stress—resistance training can do it all, and it’s the only method of exercise that involves all of these components of total fitness within a single method.

The health benefits associated with this one method of exercise are considerable as well, including:

1. Decreased gastrointestinal transit time (reducing the risk of colon cancer)⁵
2. Increased resting metabolic rate⁶
3. Improved glucose metabolism⁷
4. Improved blood-lipid profiles^{8, 9}
5. Reduced resting blood pressure^{10, 11}
6. Improved bone mineral density¹²
7. Pain and discomfort reduction for those suffering from arthritis¹³
8. Decreased lower back pain^{14, 15}
9. Enhanced flexibility¹⁶
10. Improved maximal aerobic capacity¹⁷

For those involved in athletics, resistance training can stave off the potential for injury by strengthening joints, muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments, in addition to augmenting many of the attributes associated with physical performance, such as improving an athlete’s endurance, strength, power, speed, and vertical jump.¹⁸ And, as we shall see, all of these benefits can be accomplished with a very minimal time investment.

RESISTANCE TRAINING AND AGE REVERSAL

Perhaps the biggest news to come out of the scientific community is the news that resistance training can actually reverse the aging process. You read that correctly; a study¹⁹ has revealed that resistance training for people 65 and older can actually reverse important aging effects in skeletal muscles to the point where they work more like those found in people 40 years younger. The study was supported by the US National Institute of Health and looked at DNA expression in muscle cells of 25 healthy seniors who had undergone resistance training for six months. It concentrated in particular on the cellular mitochondria, the “powerhouses” that fuel activity in cells. They are typically depleted in older people, with many of the genes that affect them turned on or off by age. This depletion results in a loss of muscle mass and many of the mobility restrictions that are often found in seniors. The lead researcher in the study, Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, said the genetic “fingerprints” of exercising seniors actually shifted from their age-altered state to one more closely resembling those found in young men and women in their mid 20s to 30s. “We improved or reversed to a large extent the gene signature of aging,” he said. This reversal was accompanied by a 50 percent improvement in strength among seniors. He went on to state that weight training might remove some of the mitochondria damaged by age-related stresses, replacing them with genetically intact ones. As well, resistance training may turn on genes that have been switched off by age and that offer muscle cells protection from damage. The seniors in the study, who had an average age of 70, had no diseases that affected their mitochondrial function and had never participated in resistance training before.

In addition, although it is tough to top “reversing the aging process” as a benefit, there are even more benefits to resistance training that should be pointed out. Researchers have discovered that many of the degenerative diseases and most of the general weakness that accompanies the aging process are related to a loss of muscle mass and strength. Although a certain amount of strength loss is inevitable, numerous studies—too many to be ignored—have shown that senior adults can maintain and regain muscle mass and strength at any age. Postmenopausal women, older men, and even those well into their nineties have all improved their muscular and skeleton structure and function through relatively simple and brief programs of strength training.

The clinically established results from resistance training are nothing short of remarkable for young and old alike. A study conducted by physiologist Wayne Wescott with seniors to determine the benefits of a brief resistance exercise training program on the body composition, muscle strength, joint flexibility, and functional ability of 19 nonambulatory senior citizens revealed some very encouraging news.

Over a span of 14 weeks, training but twice a week for six minutes a workout, performing one set of each of six different exercises, the senior residents of John Knox Village Campus (which included the Medical Center, Assisted Living, and Independent Living facilities in Orange City, Florida, the average age of which was 88 and a half years) were able to dramatically improve their body composition, muscle strength, joint flexibility, functional capacity, and mobility. Many of the seniors who started the study confined to a wheelchair were able to walk without its aid at the study’s conclusion. The 19 subjects who completed the 14-week strength-training program reported that it was a positive experience and planned to continue their exercise sessions. According to the lead trainer, patients liked the challenge of serious strength training and saw much more improvement than when on a program of resistance exercise with light cuff weights. The researchers concluded that in addition to the benefits to our senior population, such programs could be helpful to all ages, and instrumental in reducing health care costs, thereby benefiting society in general.

ONCE A WEEK

In keeping with a minimalist philosophy, an ideal exercise program would be one that takes up as little time as necessary from our busy lives but that still sufficiently stimulates our bodies to produce as many of the positive results listed above that our genetic predispositions will allow. And unlike other forms of exercise that are lower in their ability to output energy and, thus, require longer and more frequently performed bouts to drop the body’s energy levels to a degree that is meaningful enough to warrant a positive adaptive change taking place, resistance training exercise can take as little as six to 12 minutes to perform and very satisfactory and sufficient results can be obtained by engaging in it as infrequently as once a week. I will go into greater detail as to why this is so in a later chapter, but for the moment I will point out that a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in 1999 (47[10]: 1208–14) indicated that the time required for resistance training to stimulate such benefits could be obtained with only one workout a week—and, as we will see, there are more studies that support such a frequency. Indeed, a second comparison of once-weekly strength training in older adults conducted by the Academic Health Care Center of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Department of Physical Therapy, at the New York Institute of Technology, School of Health Professions, Behavioral and Life Sciences, concluded that one set of exercises performed once weekly to the point of muscle fatigue improved strength. Twice-weekly exercises in the older adult also improved strength.

The interesting thing about strength training once a week is that it not only respects each individual’s time and lifestyle (i.e., you don’t have to embrace some nebulous concept known in the vernacular as “the fitness lifestyle” in order to be fit and healthy), but such infrequent training is actually a necessity for optimal results to take place.

THE ANTI-AGING PRESCRIPTION

I have touched upon the benefits of resistance training for our senior population, but the importance of this activity for this group of individuals warrants additional consideration. There exist 10 biomarkers of aging:

1. Bone density: Because calcium tends to be lost from the bones when people age, it makes the skeleton weaker, less dense, and more brittle, which typically leads to osteoporosis.
2. Body temperature regulation: The body is supposed to maintain an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees, but as people grow older they tend to lose muscle and the heat that muscle provides, thus becoming more vulnerable in their body temperature to hot and cold, which often leads to illness—or worse.
3. Basal metabolic rate: Our rate of energizing or determining how many calories our bodies require to sustain their internal processes declines by 2 percent per decade after the age of 20.
4. Blood sugar tolerance: The body’s ability to use glucose in the bloodstream declines with age, thereby raising the risk for type 2 diabetes, which is one of the fastest growing diseases in the country.
5. A decline in muscle strength: Older people are less strong because of the gradual deterioration of the muscles and motor nerves, which begins at the age of 30 for most people.
6. The fat content of the body: Between the ages of 20 and 65, the average person doubles his ratio of fat to muscle. This process is exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle and overeating. Exercise can often serve to retard appetite and, therefore, when you’re not training, you tend to be more hungry—and to eat more often.
7. Aerobic capacity: By the age of 65 the body’s ability to use oxygen efficiently declines by 30 to 40 percent.
8. Cholesterol and HDL ratios: Around age 50 HDL (or High Density Lipoproteins, the so-called “good” cholesterol that protects the body against heart disease) loses ground to the LDL (or Low Density Lipoproteins, the so-called “bad” cholesterol)—a phenomenon that dramatically increases the risk of heart attack.
9. A decline in muscle mass: The average North American loses 6.6 pounds of muscle with each decade after young adulthood and the rate of loss increases after the age of 45 (but only if you don’t do anything to replace it).
10. Blood pressure: The majority of North Americans show a steady increase of blood pressure with each decade of age.

And the one (and only) activity that has been proven scientifically to positively affect all of these biomarkers of aging indicated above is resistance training. No other activity has proven to even come close.

In case the above weren’t enough to convince you to at least consider resistance training as your preferred mode of exercise, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported on a study done in British Columbia that showed that resistance training also served to stave off dementia in older women. It concluded:

Seniors who lifted weights or did other forms of resistance training slowed their decline to full-blown dementia. A six-month strength training program that targeted women with mild cognitive impairment and who complained of memory problems helped improve their attention, problem-solving and decision-making brain functions—all needed to live independently.²⁰

Whether you’re young or old, start a resistance training program. It doesn’t matter where you start (a gym, your home, etc.)—but start. It is no longer merely an opinion that resistance training is the best form of exercise, but rather a scientifically validated fact. The sooner you employ resistance training as your choice of exercise, your quality of life will increase enormously.