Resistance Beyond Weights

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Resistance training is especially important as we get older, to avoid not just sarcopenia (muscle loss), but also to avoid bone density loss.

  • Today’s main feature looks at some of the most practical ways to do resistance training, even if you don’t want to train with weights

  • We also focus on exercises that will strengthen some of the bones most often broken in older age

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

8 Bodyweight Exercises Everyone Should Do (7:14)

These are truly a very well-chosen set of exercises:

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🤸 MAIN FEATURE

Resistance, Your Way

We’ve talked before about the importance of resistance training:

Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

And we’ve even talked about how to make resistance training more effective:

HIIT, But Make It HIRT

(High Intensity Interval Training, but make it High Intensity Resistance Training)

Which resistance training exercises are best?

There are two reasonable correct answers here:

1. The resistance training exercises that you will actually do (because it’s no good knowing the best exercise ever if you’re not going to do it because it is in some way offputting to you)

2. The resistance training exercises that will prevent you from getting a broken bone in the event of some accident or incident

This latter is interesting, because when people think resistance training, the usually immediate go-to exercises are often things like the bench press, or the chest machine in the gym.

But ask yourself: how often do we hear about some friend or relative who in their old age has broken their humerus?

It can happen, for sure, but it’s not as often as breaking a hip, a tarsal (ankle bones), or a carpal (wrist bones).

So, how can we train to make those bones strong?

Strong bones grow under strong muscles

When archaeologists dig up a skeleton from a thousand years ago, one of the occupations that’s easy to recognize is an archer. Why?

An archer has an unusual frequent exercise: pushing with their left arm while pulling with their right arm. This will strengthen different muscles on each side, and thus, increase bone density in different places on each arm. The left first metacarpal and right first and second metacarpals and phalanges are also a giveaway.

This is because: one cannot grow strong muscles on weak bones (or else the muscles would just break the bones), so training muscles will force the body to strengthen the relevant bones.

So: if you want strong bones, train the muscles attached to those bones

This answers the question of “how am I supposed to exercise my hips” etc.

Weights, bodyweight, resistance bands

If you go to the gym, there’s a machine for everything, and a member of gym staff will be able to advise which of their machines will strengthen which muscles.

If you train with free weights at home:

• Wrist curls (forearm supported and stationary, lifting a dumbbell in your hand, palm-upwards) will strengthen the wrist

• The farmer’s walk (carrying a heavy weight in each hand) will also strengthen your wrist

  • A modified version of this involves holding the weight with just your fingertips, and then raising and lowering it by curling and uncurling your fingers)

• Lateral leg raises (you will need ankle-weights for this) will strengthen your ankles and your hips, as will hip abductions (as in today’s featured video), especially with a weight attached.

• Ankle raises (going up on your tip-toes and down again, repeat) while holding weights in your hands will strengthen your ankles

If you don’t like weights:

• Press-ups will strengthen your wrists

  • Fingertip press-ups are even better: to do these, do your press-ups as normal, except that the only parts of your hands in contact with the ground are your fingertips

  • This same exercise can be done the other way around, by doing pull-ups

  • And that same “even better” works by doing pull-ups, but holding the bar only with one’s fingertips, and curling one’s fingers to raise oneself up

• Lateral leg raises and hip abductions can be done with a resistance band instead of with weights. The great thing about these is that whereas weights are a fixed weight, resistance bands will always provide the right amount of resistance (because if it’s too easy, you just raise your leg further until it becomes difficult again, since the resistance offered is proportional to how much tension the band is under).

Remember, resistance training is still resistance training even if “all” you’re resisting is gravity!

If it fells like work, then it’s working 😉 

As for the rest of preparing to get older?

Check out:

Training Mobility Ready For Later Life

Take care!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age – by Chip Conley

While the book is titled about midlife, it could have said: midlife and beyond.

Some of the benefits discussed in this book really only kick in during one's 50s, 60s, or 70s, usually. Which, for all but the most optimistic, is generally considered to be stretching beyond what is usually called "midlife".

However! Chip Conley makes the argument for midlife being anywhere from one's early 30s to mid-70s, depending on what (and how) we're doing in life.

He talks about (as the subtitle promises) 12 reasons life gets better with age, and those reasons are grouped into 5 categories, thus:

1. Physical life

2. Emotional life

3. Mental life

4. Vocational life

5. Spiritual life

It may surprise some readers that there are physical benefits that come with aging, but we do get two chapters in that category.

The writing style is very casual, yet with references to science throughout, and a bibliography for such.

Bottom line: if you'd like to make sure you're making the most of your midlife and beyond, this a book that offers a lot of guidance on doing so!

Click here to check out Learning to Love Midlife, and age in style!

Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team