What Nine Years of Strength Training Has Taught Me About Why Active People Still Get Weak
Being active and training for strength aren’t the same thing.
I call it the Activity Trap, and I fell into it for decades.
I walked, biked, took yoga classes, hiked, and did all sorts of fun movement.
But I didn’t consistently train my strength.
The Activity Trap
When you’re active, you use the muscles required for those activities. But using a muscle isn’t the same as training it for strength.
Walking, for example, asks plenty of your lower body but very little of your upper body. And how you use your muscles matters, too. Your form and posture affect which muscles do the work and how well your body distributes the load.
I call this a trap because you feel like you are doing everything you need to do, but you are missing a big chunk of what it takes to be truly fit.
I blame some of this on the old 10,000-step idea. Believe it or not, 10,000 wasn’t originally a scientifically established target. It grew out of a Japanese pedometer marketing campaign around the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The Japanese character for 10,000—万—looks like a person walking.
I’m not down on walking. I do it all the time for cardio and my dog.
But being active ain’t enough.
To build strength for the long term, you gotta strength train.
My bad joke is that it is a life sentence.
It Starts Earlier Than You Think
Here’s the inconvenient part: without enough stimulus, we tend to lose muscle as we get older, and bone becomes harder to maintain, too.
Around age 30.
The changes are gradual and don’t happen at the same rate for everyone. But waiting until you feel weak at 50, 60, or 70 means missing decades when you could have been building and maintaining strength.
Strength Training Is the Countermeasure
You don’t have to spend hours in the gym.
There are many ways to make it work. Two or three full-body sessions of 30 to 40 minutes each week is one option. Shorter 15-minute sessions spread across the week can work too, as long as you train your entire body and give each muscle group time to recover.
The key is to challenge your muscles enough to create adaptation, allow recovery, and keep progressing over time.
Pick your method and get to work.
And maintaining muscle and bone isn’t the whole story. Strength training can make everyday movement easier, support your joints, improve balance and physical capacity, and make it possible to keep doing more of the things you enjoy.
I’ll be 69 in a week.
The truth I’m training for is that strength creates choices.