LIFT your GAME

Thought weightlifting was just for bodybuilders and powerlifters? Not so. In fact, 'lifting heavy shit' may be the secret to longevity, hormone regulation and mood for women through perimenopause and beyond.

- ROBYN MACLARTY

‘Sarcopenia’: a word every woman, particularly women who are 40+, should know. It refers to age-related loss of muscle mass and function. ‘So what?’, you may think – don’t we all grow frail as we age? Not much to be done about it, right? Wrong.

And if you’re a woman, you’ll be wanting to do all you can to build up your muscle strength at any age, but it becomes especially important – urgent, even – in our 40s, 50s and beyond.

Starting when we’re around 30, our bodies naturally start to lose 3–8% of muscle mass per decade, according to research done in the US. This rate of decline is even higher after 60, which means we could potentially lose 50% of our total muscle mass by age 80.

In some cases, this can advance to sarcopenia (believed to affect 10–20% of older adults, although this estimate is probably low due to inadequate diagnosis rates), which can manifest as trouble with basic daily activities like getting up from a chair, walking, twisting the lid off a jar, or carrying groceries. Over time, loss of strength can lead to falls or other injuries, which have a greater probability of causing life-threatening complications for older women, since we are four times more likely than men to develop osteoporosis (which causes bones to become less dense and more fragile), according to the US-based Bone Health & Osteoporosis Foundation.

To spell it out: brittle bones + low muscle mass = a recipe for disaster.

Weight training for women isn’t about aesthetics or athletic achievement (although the badass factor is an appealing perk), it’s about supporting your wellbeing and mobility well into old age. Not only is muscle strength essential for mobility and balance, but it also increases bone density.

In fact, the benefits of building muscle – skeletal muscle, in particular (see ‘What is skeletal muscle?’ overleaf) – reach far beyond reducing the odds of broken bones in older age.