Why don’t I play golf? Why don’t I grow my own vegetables?
Seriously, there’s a ton of different things one can do for some combination of health and recreation. To pick one out of the deck and ask someone “why don’t you do this one” is a pretty silly thing to do.
I do a lot of bicycling. At this time of year, when biking isn’t much fun, I go running instead. So I stay fit. Do I need more upper body strength? Can’t see why; I’ve always had enough to do pretty much anything I’ve needed to do.
But I go bicycling because I really like riding my bike. There’s nothing about weight lifting that appeals to me at all. It’s probably the reverse for the OP. That’s why he should lift weights, and I should ride my bike.
The last bit was all that was needed to answer the question of why you don’t: it doesn’t appeal to you and you feel that other activities that do appeal are sufficient.
That’s sufficient.
There is of course, as documented with ample citations in this thread, reason why to add a bit of strength training to your fitness activity selection. Big thread so understandable if did not see it. (Reading this whole thread is a heavy lift, and lifting doesn’t appeal! )
Still here it is. No lifts required:
Adding a fairly small amount of strength training to your base of cardiorespiratory conditioning choices has a very significant return on investment in healthspan. Better function as you age above and beyond simply living longer.
If that same evidence is there for golf or growing your own vegetables then threads asking why we don’t do those would be good ones to have too!
I’ve started standing on one foot to brush my teeth, and I swear my legs and abs are getting stronger just from that. I’ve started standing in tree pose while I’m waiting for my tea to heat. I’m thinking of doing more yoga.
FWIW I’m currently doing minimal strength training right now. Developed some lateral epicondylitis, aka “tennis elbow”, from a combination of having fun with steel mace as a new toy in addition to other baseline exercises and stuff trying to increase grip strength that just overloaded me. So for now I don’t lift weights to rest that and instead have another run day.
I’m a bit nervous that I can lose strength and muscle mass during that recovery period though. At my age it is easier to lose it than to gain it I think.
I have had very few weightlifting injuries. But I overdid it one session last year, resulting in bursitis in one elbow. It took a couple months to get better.
I could not train the elbow through the pain and limited range of motion. But I could train around it. Dips, curls, bench presses, arm exercises and squats disappeared from my routine. Trap bar deadlifts and squat jumps, sprinting, sundry leg exercises and machines became more prominent.
People get too worried about losing muscle with a short break or fast. I would suggest doing what you can, making smart exercise substitutions, taking daily creatine during this unwanted break but not worrying too much about muscle loss. You’ll get it back and there are other exercises than your usuals.
Well, just because you have tennis elbow doesn’t mean you have to stop lifting weights entirely. You can certainly do lower body weight training. There’s evidence that this will trigger growth in your upper body, too.
Or train unilaterally, which can offer bilateral gains.
The biggest difference for me between working out in my 40s and in the teens and twenties is the propensity for injury.
Some thing require rest, but some things can be worked around.
I have chronic tendinitis in my right elbow, but I’ve sort of gotten used to it. At worst it’s a burn when I do bench presses, but lately it’s just been a familiar ache, and not something I notice when I’m focused on the muscles I’m working.
My knees have been sore after squats lately, which frustrates me, but it just means I’ve slowed the pace of my reps, and paused my weight progression, to ensure I am not out of place - today the discomfort was less than last week.
My right shoulder has a history of injury, and is prone to discomfort, but I don’t do any sort of behind the neck press or pulldown.
Obviously, I can’t possibly know the extent of your injuries, and sometimes you definitely have to take some time off to heal, but I’m just saying that maybe there are some workarounds to consider.
Maybe try new exercises, or a different grip, or avoid using the bad elbow, or consider icing it afterwards if you can bear the pain.
(All mean to be encouraging! I’m not trying to suggest that injuries aren’t real or can’t be serious or needing rest for recovery. Surely some of my chronically sore parts are due to a reluctance to get proper treatment when old injuries happened)
Background … a marathon of years after my one previous marathon I am training for the May 5th Copenhagen Spring Marathon to run with my baby girl, now 22 living in Sweden for the year. Yes I do a few leg strength exercises (and core) still, but mostly I’m not worried about leg strength. (Did my first 3 hour run through fresh fallen snow early Friday! And an hour 15 in the negative 9 today … and I have a great steep hill for sprint repeats pretty nearby, amazingly enough for Chicago area.)
I started my marathon training with the intent of not letting myself get so obsessed with getting run miles in that I let overall strength training get pushed off and lose strength/muscle mass that may be harder to regain.
But now I guess I just go with focusing most on the miles in the bank and hope that it is just a few weeks of rest before I can ease back into including the rest of my modest strength portion. A few weeks wouldn’t worry me, but as the race gets closer (16 weeks to go) I’d want to shift more time to runs, so blending together I do worry about the impact of high (for me, paltry by a serious runner’s standard) weekly miles for over four months without enough strength training in the mix?
But I do probably worry too much.
Unilateral is interesting but how I understand it is that the strength gains are in the brain-nerve firing pattern coordination part. It does not preserve contralateral mass.
Encouraging thoughts appreciated, but that’s my priority to avoid. I’m of the pain is my respected friend giving me advice I should listen to mindset. Or at least know I should be. It isn’t too bad but it is consistent and it didn’t take the hint when I tried pretending it wasn’t there!
I walked to a friend’s house today. It’s about 1.4 miles from my home. Granted, it was snowing, and it’s more work to walk in the snow than on dry ground. And walking home was enough easier that it might be barely uphill. But boy, I’m out of shape. I think I’m doing okay with lifting, but i need more walking in my my life.
While it’s probably not necessary to grow your own vegetables, it seems likely that Americans eat too few vegetables in their diet. Growing them would, likely, increase the amount that people ate.
I was watching a Netflix documentary on places that have a lot of people who live to 100, and one aspect of Okinawa that was brought up is that a lot of Okinawans garden. One focus of the show is that most of these places have exercise incorporated into their lifestyle in some way (gardening, living and walking in a place with really steep hills, manual labor, etc) instead of or in addition to exercising just for exercising’s sake.
As a computer programmer, I do do exercise for exercise’s sake, mostly strength exercises. A fair question to me would be more why don’t you do cardio - I think both have unique benefits, and both should be done if possible, but if you only can do one, I think cardio has more benefits to overall health.
I don’t think anyone here is promoting only doing one?
FWIW my read of the evidence is that you are correct. Cardio alone has more impact, at least on reduced mortality rate, than strength training alone does … and a fairly small amount of strength training adds significantly on top of that, with benefits topping off fairly quickly. For long quality of life strength reserves matter too.
I respectfully disagree. The health benefits of cardio relate to the heart and lungs. Weight training builds muscles, and therefore can also tax (and strengthen) the heart. Moreover, preserving muscle mass makes you more mobile, more resilient, and assists with weight control, insofar as muscle ensures you have a higher metabolic rate.
Having said that, cardio is great for your health. But it’s not the better choice, in my opinion.
Some of these perpetual fitness debates mean little in real life. In practice, you can do both and strength training done properly can act as cardio too. Most people eat more protein on Western diets than the minimum possible amount. Fitness subvarieties (classes, cardio. Zumba, powerlifting, bodybuilding, etc.) have more similarities than differences.
I would say strength training is better but many would disagree, with some decent evidence.
I’m pretty sure that all the studies suggest you are better doing both some cardio and some strength exercises. Other than, “i enjoy one and hate the other”, i can’t think why anyone would choose to do only one of those.
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