Just a few exercises…. Fifteen minutes once a week increases strength by sixty percent, even in eighty year olds.
Because they are heavy.
Oh for Pete’s sake, Dr_P. I don’t mean to threadshit on your admirably-intentioned witnessing thread for the benefits of strengthening exercise, which I heartily support in general. But it really is getting kind of exasperating to see the repeated dumbing down and blurring out of study data, first in their oversimplification and sometimes misrepresentation in the popular-press articles you link to, and then in your posts’ own broad-brushing approximations of the articles’ descriptions of the studies’ findings. It’s like watching a slow-motion game of “Whisper Down the Lane” (“Telephone”, to some) played over and over.
In the most recent example, we start out with a study published in April 2022 which claims the following:
The study’s January 2021 preprint publication says the same thing. In your linked Washington Post article published today that links to that study, it claims that
I have not been able to figure out where this apparent discrepancy in age range for the study participants is coming from. And then you hype the description of the findings further with the confident assertion that
We don’t need constant exaggeration and cherrypicking of research findings to convince us that exercise is good for one’s health. Can you maybe switch to linking to actual study publications, perhaps with quoted excerpts from their summarized results, instead of these journalistic popular puff pieces which may not always do a very accurate job of describing what the study actually found?
How would you define doubling strength? The number of reps you could do? or would it be measures of peak strength?
I am 74 years old. Until about 6 months ago I had been almost completely idle for the past 4 years. During that 4 year period I may have taken on 10 projects of work such as painting, drywall, handy man stuff that lasted for approx. a week. Each project I did had a slightly renewing effect on my strength that seemed to diminish almost completely over about 3 or 4 months. as of 6 months ago I was horribly short winded and would tire quickly doing any kind of work at all. I knew that I had a fairly good size job coming up soon that I knew I couldn’t handle in my current condition, so I decided to start exercising. I like work but I hate exercise.
I only did a few exercises once or twice a week, approx 15 min spread out over 30 min or so. I did strict push-ups never more than one set of as many as I could do. I started at 6 push ups and 3 months later was doing 32. I did squats with no weights while balancing with a chair. I started with 8 reps and worked up to 25 at a much faster pace with less dependency on the chair. For stomach I did crunches in bed, I didn’t monitor it but the difference was drastic. For pull ups, I used these rubber bands and loaded it up to where I could do a max of 10 reps, I added more than double the rubber bands.
The criticism is somewhat fair, in the sense that the popular press is often pretty bad at interpreting studies and inclined to sensation. However, I don’t want to pay for access to the full article. I think WaPo is often better than many sources, and I frequently quote it on other topics.
It’s a big study, well powered, with almost 15000 participants. When they quote an age range of 48 plus 11, they don’t mean all participants are between 37 and 59, but rather that the standard deviation is 11. This might mean there were about fifty participants about 80 years old. It may have been glib to say improvement of sixty percent given a longer time frame, but this is not far off from the shorter one, and is also what the WaPo reported.
So many of these studies are done on 20 people or so. I feel my conclusion even elderly people benefit from strength training is amply shown by this study, though one could question some numbers.
As for defining strength, I presume that they compared eventual weight to the original baseline for a given number of reps.
That’s interesting. I guess I’ve never really been “almost completely idle”. Even in the pandemic I had a lot of running up and down stairs, lifting rocks in the backyard (while digging in my garden) and random other stuff. And in the past several years I’ve scheduled weight-bearing exercise for 40-50 minutes every Friday morning. So I look at “15 minutes, once a week” and think, “yeah, ain’t gonna do nothing”. But maybe I’m looking at the wrong base.
FWIW here is a pdf of the article:
And while I can find nothing documenting 18 to 80 they do graph groups 30, 50 and 70 in figure 4.
Key take aways:
I have to admit my initial reaction was similar to @Kimstu’s … but I was surprised that the actual study really does show that surprising degree of benefit, albeit not 60%, occurring fairly rapidly. Some may be just learning muscle pattern activation for specific activities, sure, but still.
And FWIW the WaPo article’s claim of by “as much as 60%” is accurate. Less than that was more typical though. The researchers may had shared that there was an 18 yo and an 80 yo in the set with the writer.
Some would say you have an awful job, because it’s so physically demanding. I think all that activity is an asset.
Right, I got that, I was just wondering where the upper bound of “80” or “eighties” came from, because I never saw it anywhere in the data, nor was there any information about how many participants had actually attained that age.
Fair enough, although as I said, there’s a freely accessible full preprint online as well.
Sorry about being snappish, and I appreciate your evangelism on the benefits of exercise in general. I just get peeved sometimes at the internet’s ubiquitous tendency to “clickbaitify” every damn study result by amplifying the most extreme aspects or interpretations of it, and I like it when Dopers are pushing back against that tendency rather than enabling it.
I’m pretty idle by default, though over the last year I’ve gotten into a habit of running and strength training. However ATM 15 minutes of strength training once a week is about all I’ve got in me. I’ve had some or other sort of viral illness almost every week for the last few months. They leave me completely drained. And just when I’m getting up the strength and resume exercise…BAM! Down for the count again. It’s been so disruptive my VO2 max fell a point last week, and it was pretty pathetic to begin with.
The fifteen minutes is still the difference for me between back pain and no back pain. The difference between feeling my muscles and the stability of movement and feeling like jello.
So yeah I’m not going to win any Olympic competitions, but it does make a difference for me.
The writers interviewed the researchers.
Sorry for multi posting- but the point of the article is that you are likely on a relative plateau, and additional gains will likely be slight and hard won.
The article may imply this, but pushing through plateaus may be a matter of effort and applied knowledge. I wouldn’t say you can or can’t do anything on the basis of one exercise study. I believe with good coaching or knowledge one can push past many plateaus.
In fact, one of the reasons I am passionate about this topic is I believe exercise, including strength training, keeps elderly people more mobile and reduces risk of fractures, which can be devastating. Even a moderate hospital stay can reduce muscle mass and this can make things like walking more difficult (especially if in spinal and parsspinal muscles) . It does not matter much if a strength gain is 40% or 60%, or too low to win a local Highland Games or national Olympic competition. But keeping mobile, remaining independent, avoiding surgery after a fall, delaying or avoiding use of canes and wheelchairs - these things matter and are huge. Not to mention effects on mood, metabolism, reducing incidence of chronic diseases, weight management and energy levels. And that ain’t just click bait.
They did address that in the discussion section. Looked at a study of 10,000 Powerlifters.
Still they leave open the possibility that other variations “might enable further strength adaptations after this plateau occurs”
This is basically why i do it. I’ve reached the age where if you don’t use it, you lose it, and i hope to be able to continue using my body for a couple more decades.
Can’t speak to metabolism for sure, but the effect on my mood is mostly negative. I feel sweaty and icky and don’t want to move. I find it hard to get other stuff done afterwards. If i work out too much, i feel cold afterwards, and think my overall metabolism drops. I kinda hate exercising, and it’s because of it’s effect on my mood. I do it solely because i think it’s good for me.
I think there are a lot of people who feel good after exercise who don’t understand that that’s not universal.
(If I’ve been very sedentary, getting up and moving around can improve my mood. I refer to it as “getting my blood flowing”. But the amount of “exercise” it takes to do that is minuscule.)
I suspect that most people enjoy exercise in the same way that they enjoy mowing their yard. They get enjoyment from the end result rather than the activity itself. No one is going to spend time pushing a mower around the yard if it doesn’t actually cut the grass. If exercise didn’t provide health benefits, few people would do things like lift weights or go jogging because those specific activities are not inherently enjoyable. Some activities are inherently enjoyable, like sports and dancing, and people do them for the fun rather than any health benefits. I think most people incorporate exercise into their life as one of the many tasks they do on a regular basis for the improvement it brings to their life rather than doing it because they find it fun and enjoyable.
Exercise puts me in a great mood temporarily, but I’ve noticed I also get really aggressive. I’m more likely to snap at someone for a few hours after working out. I’m more likely to get fixated on some political outrage. I more or less just want to kick some ass.
Also, exercise really does little for my hormonal depression. It helps with my regular depression, but the effect is usually brief. But anything related to PMDD and it’s like I didn’t exercise at all. It certainly helps with mental health, but it’s not a panacea.
While I realize that you couched your language, I think that you are describing the experience of the typical person who only works out sporadically, and that the experience of a consistent/regular exerciser is far different.
That is, people who lift weights or go jogging all the time do in fact enjoy the experience, and not just the end result.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, famously declared the pump one gets when working out as like “having sex with a woman and cumming” (he said it in the movie Pumping Iron).
Now, Arnold was being over the top, but it is definitely true that there are good feelings associated with muscles made taut by the rush of blood from exercising (I.e. “the pump”) which bodybuilder’s crave.
Similarly, those really strong weight lifter guys in the gym actually genuinely enjoy putting up personal bests on their lifts. It’s fun the way other sporting endeavors are.
And (I’ve been told, at least) there is a euphoria that is associated with running, or that it’s peaceful and helps clear anxiety. Point being, marathoners run because they like it, just because of some aspiration about resting heart rate.
…
As for my answer to the OP? I don’t lift weights because of depression / anxiety. When that’s under control, I really enjoy it. But I need to eat well to have the energy to exercise, and if I’m in the throes of anxiety/depression, I skip meals and eat like shit.
I’m about due for a reboot, though.
The reason is the researchers are only emphasizing a few specific exercises, easy for people to do. A power lifter benefits from periodization, but works through plateaus due to several similar and accessory exercises, techniques like rest-pause and holds, isometrics, etc. Of course there are limits on what anyone can do. But the percentage of significant strength gain is irrelevant, avoiding the consequences of poor strength is not.