4 Things You Need to Know About Strength-Training, Especially If You're Old

I'm a certified personal trainer, and the arena of lifting weights (also known as strength training, resistance training, bodybuilding and weight training) is still so often misunderstood by both men and women, young and old alike. Well, I'd like to set some things straight, when it comes to working out with weights.

"If you stop lifting weights, your muscle will turn to fat."

This is like saying bone will turn to pancreas. Fat tissue and muscle tissue are two completely different kinds of tissue. When people stop working out and gain fat, it's because they're burning far fewer calories, yet continuing to eat in amounts that previously sustained the workouts. Food that was once being burned by exercising, is now being stored; hence, the fat gain. Inactivity slows resting metabolic rate. Unexercised muscles shrink and require less food for sustenance. This all translates to a fatter body. It's hard for the pro-football player, who's used to eating 7,000 calories a day, to suddenly drop down to 2,500 when he retires. Fat gain, then, shouldn't be surprising.

"You can't build muscle after a certain age."

The only people who can't build muscle from exercise are dead. Many studies with nursing home residents in their 90s have shown that even frail, decrepit bodies can spark muscle growth under the right conditions: resistance training. Though a frail, aging person will never get a body like Mr. America, he or she can certainly gain valuable, health-giving muscle tissue by simply imposing a demand on those muscles. Unfamiliar demand translates to new muscle growth to accommodate that new, unfamiliar demand. Even men and women who are confined to wheel chairs (but are still mobile) can gain lean tissue, which will improve overall health.