Ladies WHO LIFT

From NYC to Texas, women in their 60s, 70s, and beyond are flipping the script on aging—training hard and reaping physical, emotional, and social benefits. Science says they're onto something.

- CASSIE SHORTSLEEVE

When you contract your muscles, you train the brain to do hard things, research shows.

FOR YEARS, we've been bombarded by the trope of aging gracefully—staying small, moving slowly, playing it safe in the gym and in life. But a growing number of women are rejecting that tired script and picking up heavy weights instead. Supported by research, they're building bone density, muscle mass, mental resilience, and a fierce sense of self at every age.

Lifting heavy—at any age—is backed by science. Take an investigation aptly named the LIFTMOR study: When postmenopausal women with low bone density added 30 minutes of supervised high-intensity resistance and impact training (think deadlifts, overhead presses, jumping chinups) twice a week for eight months, the bone density in their lower spines increased by 2.9 percent on average. The control group, which did stretching and light weight resistance, lost 1.2 percent. People in the high-intensity group were lifting heavy too—at 80 to 85 percent of their one-rep max (if your max deadlift is 100 pounds, that would be 80 to 85 pounds). And no one in the heavy-lifting group got hurt.

"I didn't realize how much strength and balance I'd lost over the years," Joni Day says.

As women age, particularly after 50, they lose estrogen and fast-twitch muscle fibers, says orthopedic surgeon Vonda Wright, MD, author of Unbreakable. Those fibers are responsible for quick, powerful movements, like catching yourself during a fall. The decline is partly due to changes in muscle stem cells. “If we let time, biology, and physics go unchecked, we'll keep losing fibers, making us vulnerable to injury and less able to move confidently and independently,” she says.