People 65 and older who did strength training twice a week were 46% less likely to die over the next 15 years than people who did not according to a study from researchers at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA.

“The association between [strength training] and death remained after adjustment for past medical history and health behaviors,” the paper notes.

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"Research evidence does not support [ Resistance Training ] as effective for weight loss with or without diet restriction" notes the American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand on Appropriate Physical Activity Intervention Strategies For Weight Loss And Prevention Of Weight Regain For Adults that was published in February 2009. (Noted in Table 1 on page 460.)

"There is limited evidence that [ Resistance Training ] promotes gain or maintenance of lean mass and loss of body fat during energy restriction and there is some evidence [ Resistance Training ] improves chronic disease risk factors (i.e., HDL [ cholesterol ], LDL [ cholesterol ], insulin, blood pressure)," they continue. Read the entire article | Email this article

Resistance training reverses muscle loss in the elderly, whereas aerobic exercise does not notes D. J. Millward from the University of Surrey in Surrey, England in an Editorial in the November 2008 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"[A]ccording to the work of Campbell et al (2002), resistance exercise reverses sarcopenia [age-related loss of muscle] at relatively low protein intakes (ie, safe level of 0.8 [grams per kilogram of body weight per day]), and such training responses are not improved by higher protein intakes or influenced by protein quality [Campbell et al, 2007]," Millward writes.

"Indeed high levels of aerobic exercise have long been known not to prevent sarcopenia [age-related loss of muscle], even though they are, assumedly, accompanied by high food and hence protein intakes."

Comment: Hormone replacement therapy also reverses muscle loss in the elderly (Sorensen et al, 2001). Read the entire article | Email this article

Women who were 25- to 44-years-old and did strength training twice a week for two years reduced their percent body fat by 3.7 percent compared to a decrease of 0.1 percent for the control group according to a study by Kathryn H. Schmitz at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and others. Read the entire article | Email this article

Patients who lifted weights in addition to dieting lost 4.9 pounds more after six months than a diet-only group, and 11 pounds more after eleven months. (p. 47) Patients who engaged in weight lifting-plus-aerobics-plus-diet lost 2 pounds more than those with only aerobics-plus-diet according to the U.S. NIH's Obesity Guidelines (p. 47).
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Women who lift weights decrease their fat intake, and the stronger they got the less fat they ate according to a recent study. Read the entire article | Email this article