It’s no longer breaking news that supplementing your running – or indeed any form of aerobic exercise – with regular strength training brings numerous rewards. By working on your strength, you fortify your muscles, bones and tendons, helping you to run faster, delay fatigue and reduce your risk of developing an injury. Plus, it adds interest and variety to an otherwise running-centric routine.
As if that wasn’t enough, new data suggests that there are even more reasons to get on board with strength training. Specifically, this new research suggests that strength training could help to decrease your biological age by several years – stressing the importance of adding lifting to your life.
Here’s what the study unearthed, along with some simple, personal trainer-verified ways to make strength exercises a habit.
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What did the study find?
Running vs. swimming: Which is better for you Biology, analysed the impact of strength training on aging in nearly 5,000 men and women between the ages of 20 to 69.
For the study, researchers looked at the length of the participants’ telomeres, which are protective DNA caps at the ends of chromosomes, through blood testing. (Among other things, telomeres help to prevent your DNA from getting damaged and are usually measured in biological aging.) The participants were also asked how often they worked out, including how often they did strength training.
Ultimately, the researchers discovered that doing 90 minutes of strength training a week was linked with a reduction of nearly four years in biological age. This means that if you d0 180 minutes a week of strength training, you could cut your biological age by up to eight years.
What are the key takeaways from the study?
The findings line up well with current exercise guidelines in the UK. According to the NHS, adults should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week, with at least two days of strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups – that’s the legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms.
As for the link with aging, the study’s researchers found that strength training ‘mitigates some of the damage caused by such chronic diseases, reversing muscle loss, raising resting metabolic rate, promoting fat loss and improving cardiovascular health.’ This may ‘limit disease and slow the aging of cells’ as a result.
In other words, the main takeaway is that strength training could help you to be biologically younger.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Advertisement - Continue Reading Below, points out that the strength training done by the study’s participants was all self-reported, which means that some people could have fudged or exaggerated how much lifting they actually do. There wasn’t always a specific weight-lifting protocol, leaving plenty of room for variation here.
Either way, the study found that more is better when it comes to weight lifting and telomere length. ‘More hours are most correlated to the longest telomere length,’ says Matheny.
What’s the easiest way to start strength training?
If you’ve never picked up a set of weights, it’s understandable to feel a little intimidated by it. But Matheny says that it is possible to get an easy-to-follow routine started without equipment.
‘You don’t need weights beyond your own bodyweight to start strength training,’ he says. ‘So start with bodyweight stuff.’
He suggests starting your routine by focusing on larger muscle groups, like your legs and glutes. That means doing things like lunges, squats, walking lunges, step-ups and step-back lunges. ‘Those are the easiest things to do that recruit large muscle groups,’ notes Matheny.
To work your upper body, try push-ups and pull-ups. ‘For push-ups, you can start with a plank – that is strength training,’ says Matheny, who adds that you can do kneeling push-ups if a full push-up feels like too much. ‘For pull-ups, you can use a band for assistance and work your way up,’ he adds.
To challenge yourself, simply add more repetitions, step higher, or use less aids to get the full body resistance, says Matheny.
‘When you’ve tapped out on that, start adding some weights,’ says Matheny. ‘Then, ideally, you get to the gym.’
