Study: Strength Training Helps Women of All Ages

Geezer has long believed that women don’t need any training in resistance– it’s something they’re born with– but that hasn’t stopped researchers from studying the ways that resistance training can benefit women. Now comes a study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, suggesting that while resistance training helps women of all ages, younger bodies respond to it in more ways than older bodies.  Jeannine Stein, health writer for the L.A. Times, reports on the research, which looked at 49 inactive women, half younger (18 to 33 years old) and
half older (65 to 84 years old). The training groups engaged
in an eight-week strength-training program consisting of knee-extension
exercises that concentrated on quadricep muscles. Stein reports that while both the younger and older women showed about a 12 percent
increase in muscle strength, when it came to muscle
power, the young women logged a 35 percent increase, while the older women had
only a 9 percent increase.
Read more in the L.A. Times.