Resistance training helps slow ageing

Andrew Dunne demonstrates resistance training exercises. / Courtesy of Andrew Dunne

By Andrew Dunne

When I began writing this article, it was a Thursday night. For many of my friends and peers, that means trivia night at one of the popular expat bars in downtown Gwangju, where I've lived for several years. In light of that, I'm going to begin this article with a little trivia:

You have hundreds of these. You use them every day. You're using them right now to read this article. Without these, you couldn't even blink or breathe, let alone perform basic daily functions like getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, talking, walking, or picking up things.

What am I referring to?

A tip of my Irish cap to those of you that said muscles (bonus points if you also named the three types of muscle: smooth, cardiac, and skeletal).

When people think about muscles, they tend to think about the skeletal muscles. And, for good reason. They are the muscles that we can control. Examples include our arms, legs, shoulders, and back. Our arms will not bend, for instance, unless we want them to. Skeletal muscles also play a major role in our appearance. People with well-maintained skeletal muscles have toned, athletic body shapes like many Hollywood actors such as Taylor Lautner, Christian Bale, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Alba, and Scarlett Johansson, or K-pop artists like Siwon of Super Junior, Daesung of Bigbang, Minho of SHINee, Yu jin of After School, and Ga In of Brown Eyed Girls.

I don't want to get too philosophical right now, but we live in a world that places such importance on money and its pursuit. This is, of course, understandable, since even the most bare necessities _ food, shelter, and clothing _ cannot generally be had without money. But, without muscles it would be literally impossible to do anything. Therefore, it could be argued that muscle is the ultimate currency, not money. Or, as is often said, health equals wealth. Conversely, wealth without health is meaningless.

To further emphasize the importance of maintaining skeletal muscle mass and strength, consider the fact that virtually all diseases and pathways leading to death share a common feature: they result in a reduction in the size and functionality of our muscles and other lean body mass. So, it stands to reason that maintaining a strong body can increase the chances of living a longer, healthier, happier life.

Taking care of our muscles is particularly imperative as we age. You see, from the time we are born until our early 30s, we are in an anabolic or growing state in which our hormone levels, metabolic rate, and other bodily functions are at their highest and operating favorably. However, during our 30s, we enter into the catabolic state, where bodily functions begin a gradual but continuous decline. What exactly does this mean? Fat gain and muscle loss, to be blunt. Not to mention, our organs start to shrink, our aerobic power is affected, and our height begins to decrease, among other things.

As we age, hormonal changes contribute to loss of muscle mass. This is bad for our appearance and health because muscle is more active than fat tissue and therefore burns more calories and helps you to avoid fat gain. To compound matters, as people age, they often become less active or exercise less vigorously. This not only results in decreases in muscle size and strength, but it also means people burn fewer calories. Couple this with a food or caloric intake that is often higher than calories expended and the outcome is inevitable: fat gain.

As we age, not only do we lose muscle size and strength due to lack of use, but our muscle cells shrink and damage more easily compared to earlier years and at the same time they don't repair themselves as efficiently.

To make matters even worse, as we age, we also become more likely to lay body fat around our waistlines and hips. Furthermore, this new body fat, as well as the body fat we already have, is steadily replaced and laid down as white fat, also known as the bad fat, instead of the brown or good fat of our youth. Rather than getting too technical, I'll simply say that too much white fat increases the risk for heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

So, to summarize so far: ageing negatively alters body composition, in that we tend to simultaneously lose muscle and gain fat. A double whammy! And, this explains why a 70-year-old person may weigh the same on the scale as they did in their 20s but look drastically different in the mirror. Even though the person's weight has not changed, their body composition has. They now have a lower percentage of muscle and a higher percentage of fat. Muscle is denser than fat and therefore takes up less space, so you look firmer and more compact if you possess more muscle than fat.

I don't wish to be the bearer of more bad news but when people gain fat and lose muscle, their desire to exercise can diminish simply because many forms of exercise become more difficult and cumbersome when one has more fat to carry around.

It's a vicious cycle: fat gain and muscle loss which often accompany ageing can further exacerbate fat gain and muscle loss because these conditions often make exercising less appealing.

The good news is that you can stave off or slow down the tendency to gain fat and lose muscle that accompanies ageing. One of the surest and most efficient ways to maintain muscle mass and strength, lose fat, and improve your body shape is resistance training. And, the sooner you start resistance training the more benefits you will enjoy now and later in life. So, don't wait. Take action now.

In case you're unfamiliar with resistance training, it involves exercising your muscles using an opposing force, such as lifting and lowering a weight. It's also known as weight training or strength training but those labels can sometimes invoke images of big sweaty men with bulging muscles, so resistance training is a more neutral label. But, women, fear not. Resistance training will not cause you to develop giant muscles without years of extreme effort and dedication. The hormonal makeup of females simply does not allow women to develop the same degree of muscularity as men. Men can produce 10 to 20 times more testosterone than women.

Below, I'll provide four resistance training exercises that you can use to shape and strengthen your entire body. The best part: you can perform these exercises almost anywhere. The exercises involve no equipment or even the need to wear gym clothing. You won't even break a sweat since the exercises involve little movement. Talk about simplicity, which as Leonardo da Vinci once stated "is the ultimate sophistication".

Simply perform the following four exercises two times a week, preferably on non-consecutive days, such as Monday and Friday. You could perform each exercise one after another with or without a little rest. Or, you could perform each exercise at different times throughout the day. The choice is yours. Do which is easiest for you to incorporate into your day. As already mentioned, these exercises require no equipment. Your bodyweight will serve as the opposing force. Your job is to hold your body in the positions as shown in the photos. If you are new to resistance training, try to hold each position for 10 seconds and eventually work your way up to 60 seconds. Every workout, try to hold each exercise 5 seconds longer than the previous workout. Once you can comfortably hold each position for 60 seconds, you are ready to advance your resistance training. Lastly, do not hold your breath while performing the exercises. Try to breathe normally.

When most people want to adopt a healthier lifestyle and improve their body shape, they use cardiovascular exercises such as walking and running and neglect resistance training. This is a mistake. An exercise program based entirely on cardio can cause a loss of lean body mass which does not produce the tight, toned appearance that is typically desired. A program utilizing both resistance training and cardiovascular activities produces superior health and body composition results, as I will explain in a future article.

The writer is an assistant professor at Chosun University in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province. He can be reached at a_dunne@ymail.com.