Why Men Need To Strength Train As They Age!

Strength training is not just for the young guys and I would argue that as men age, strength training becomes more and more important to maintain muscle function and quality of life.

Due to the natural loss of testosterone with aging, it becomes more difficult to maintain and build muscle mass. Furthermore, in those who don’t strength train to combat this, we generally see a loss of muscle mass as we age, along with a loss of muscle function and decreased quality of life. Easy tasks of daily living such as getting up from a chair, playing with the grandkids at the park, or working on some of our favourite outdoors hobbies such as woodworking or playing in our recreational hockey league become difficult.

While some men tend to do endless amounts of cardio as exercise as they age, I would argue that strength training is just as important if not more important, as muscle mass helps to maintain and increase our slowing metabolism as we age that helps to combat fat mass gain. Furthermore, strength training also helps to maintain our cardiovascular health and can be as effective as pure cardiovascular exercise to prevent heart attack and stroke. 

When combined with a die that includes adequate dietary protein, resistance training in the older years can still promote muscle gain, so even if you are starting to resistance train later in life it still has tremendous benefits.

Here at SST we have a program designed specifically for men over the age of 44 (MAXFITT FOR MEN 44), come in for a free demo class to see how we train our guys to maximize the benefits of strength training as they age.