Are you too old for weight lifting? Will weight lifting help you stay and look younger? The answer to first question is no and to second is a resounding yes. Weight lifting will help both men and women stay fit and supple and might even help you look younger. And, no matter what your age, you’re not too old to start.

Dr.Walter Bortz, in The Journal of American Medical Association, 1982, stated that a number of physical changes we undergo as we age, such as loss of muscle tone, organ deterioration, and osteoporosis are “indistinguishable whether caused by age or inactivity.” He believed that exercise could delay many of diseases associated with aging, adding “at least a portion of changes commonly attributed to aging are in reality caused by disuse and, as such, subject to correction”.

As we age, we lose bone density and muscle mass. We get stiff and our joints creak. Instead of using our body, we “rest” it even more, starting a very dangerous downward spiral. The synovial fluid dries up, tendons become brittle, sinews grow weak. It hurts to move, so we don’t.

More recently Dr Henry Lodge and Chris Cowley published a new book on this theme, "Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond". The premise of this book is that weight lifting will help reverse loss of both bone density and muscle mass that begins to take place as we get older. And they’re not talking about light weights, but rather big heavy weights.

In July 1983, Terry Todd wrote in Sports Illustrated that “Anyone who has spent much time in what is sometimes called "Iron Game" has, of course, seen weight trainers over 40 whose physiques were… surprisingly youthful. Apparently there is something about act of regularly stressing your body with heavy exercise that gives it wherewithal to resist visual manifestations of advancing age…research in this area suggests that men and women of middle age will respond to systemic progressive resistance with weights by becoming more powerful and more flexible, with more endurance and less fat.”

In 2003, Centers for Disease Control reported that strength training "can be very powerful in reducing signs and symptoms of numerous diseases and chronic conditions, among them:arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, back pain and depression."

Strength training will also increase your flexibility and balance, which decreases likelihood and severity of falls. One study in New Zealand in women 80 years of age and older showed a 40% reduction in falls with simple strength and balance training.

I don’t agree that we need to undertake heavy weight training to see substantial benefits.

Free Weights vs. Machines vs. Bodyweight Exercises

For maximum muscle gain, focus of your workouts should consist of free weight exercises. Not machines or bodyweight exercises. This is not to say that you should not use machines or bodyweight exercises, but they should not be focus of your training. To get an effective, muscle blasting workout, you must stimulate most muscle fibers as possible, and machines do not do this.

The main reason for this is a lack of stabilizer and synergist muscle development. Stabilizer and synergist muscles are supporting muscles that assist main muscle in performing a complex lift. The more stabilizers and synergists worked, more muscle fibers stimulated. Multi-jointed free weight exercises like bench press, require many stabilizer and synergistic muscle assistance to complete lift. On other hand doing a bench press using a machine will need almost no stabilizer assistance.

Since machines are locked into a specific range of motion and help to support weight along that path, they fail to stimulate muscles that surround area you are working (stabilizers). This is a mistake. If your stabilizer muscles are weak, then major muscle group will never grow!

Free weight exercises like dumbbell press or squat, for example, put a very large amount of stress on supporting muscle groups. That's why you will get fatigued faster and not be able to lift as much weight as you did on machine. But you will gain more muscle, become stronger very quickly and have a true gauge of your strength.

If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all multi-jointed exercises have been completed.

Beginners should begin with a limited combination of machine exercises, bodyweight exercises and mult-jointed free weight exercises. Before increasing weight levels, they should work on becoming familiar with proper form and execution of each. Soon, bodyweight exercises will become insufficient to stimulate growth and they will need to focus on more free weight exercises.

Multi-Jointed Exercises

The exercises that work large muscle groups are called compound (or multi-joint) movements that involve simultaneous stimuation of many muscle groups. These compound exercises should be foundation of any weight training program because they stimulate most amount of muscle in least amount of time.

Here are basic movements: