Good article – no doubt about it, to live longer do strength training (lift weights, body weight training, etc)

Not saying stop doing aerobic exercise – but … And forget needing to do heavy weights, like the cartoon here. Almost any strength training works.

To Delay Death, Lift Weights. Two new studies remind of us of what we already know but sometimes forget.

The results, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, found that those with low muscle strength were more than twice as likely to have died during the follow-up period than those with normal muscle strength. In contrast, having low muscle mass didn’t seem to matter as much.

The reference group, on the right side in the front, is those without either condition. In comparison, those with both conditions were 2.66 times as likely to die during the study. Having low muscle mass but normal strength, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be such a bad thing.

Here's the second study –

Researchers in Australia analyzed data from 80,000 adults in England and Scotland who completed surveys about their physical activity patterns starting in the 1990s. The headline result was that those who reported doing any strength training were 23 percent less likely to die during the study period and 31 percent less likely to die of cancer. Meeting the guidelines by strength training twice a week offered a little extra benefit.

One interesting (and, for me, reassuring) detail: Strength training in a gym and doing bodyweight exercises seemed to confer roughly equivalent benefits. So you don’t necessarily need to heave around large quantities of iron.

In this particular cohort, the benefits of meeting only the strength-training guidelines seemed to be roughly equivalent to meeting only the aerobic-training guidelines—at least in terms of overall mortality.

All very interesting. Hit the link above for the whole article, from Outside Magazine.