Just between you and me … I’m not one of those people who finds strength training fun. And yet, here I am, twice a week:
Weight training is as valuable as any one thing I can think of for long-term physical well-being.
Why? It’s actually one of the more important preps I can make, both for dealing with emergencies and for long-term well-being. The same may well be true for you. Salty and I talk it over in this podcast:
Strength training is injury prevention
Suppose you have a fifty pound bug-out bag and go to sling it over your shoulder as head out the door. Or your foot slips as you go down a steep grade to ford a creek, since the bridge is down due to the earthquake. Perhaps your partner has twisted an ankle rushing away from a bad situation and needs a shoulder to lean on. As you make the effort, joints move in ways they were not meant to move, or muscles and ligaments tear: You’re injured. A bad situation just got Much worse.
These scenarios could happen to anyone of course … but they are much less likely to happen to those who do regular strength training. It’s a core principle of physiology: We always remodel, and we remodel in response to recent stresses. If you stress muscles, bones, and joints regularly and appropriately, they remodel themselves to be stronger and more resilient. This is true if you’re twenty years old or eighty-seven; male or female, athletically inclined or not so much.
In the long term, strength training is very important for bone health. (1) It not only slows the bone loss of aging, but even reverses it. Risk of fracture is greatly reduced and mobility is higher. Osteoporosis leads to broken bones that are hard to manage at the best of times, much less during an emergency — you can read more about that here.
Which bone do you think is more likely to fracture? Thanks to BruceBlaus* for the image.
Strength training improves daily living
This is particularly important late in life. The slow, uncertain movements, timidity about trying to do things, and overall weakness and fragility associated with aging can be delayed quite a bit by regular strength training. (2) Often they can be delayed so long they’re never an issue at all.
On the prepper front: You’ll be able to prep better if you’re more mobile and have more strength.
Some prepping and some things we might have to do in an emergency are hard work. Strength training helps you be ready.
You’re also less likely to develop chronic diseases if you’re moving more. (3) There is no more important prep I can imagine for times when medical access is limited than not having a chronic disease. I know I say that a lot, but it’s so important <– no shame.
How do you do strength training?
First principle: Some is better than none.
Second principle: Lifting close to your limits brings better gains than lifting light things. (And if anyone out there is averse to ‘bulking up’, take a look at my pics. Clearly if your genetics and hormones don’t encourage big bulky muscles, it’s not happening despite regular strength training.)
Third principle: Everything that requires strength counts. I often do the gym (bleh) because it’s the quickest way to take care of business; but hard effort prepping like putting in trees does the job well too. So do the sort of effort you’ll actually do.
Fourth principle: Regular is best. Since we’re always remodeling, always having the ‘recent stress’ to encourage us to build and keep the muscle, bone, and ligament strength is necessary for good results. Twice a week seems to be a sweet spot for best results with least time spent.
1) Petranick Kimberly; Berg, Kris. 1997. The Effects of Weight Training on Bone Density of Premenopausal, Postmenopausal, and Elderly Women: A Review. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 11:3.
2) L. Jerome Brandon, Debbi A. Gaasch, Lisa W. Boyette, Adrienne M. Lloyd; Effects of Long-Term Resistive Training on Mobility and Strength in Older Adults With Diabetes, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 58, Issue 8, 1 August 2003, Pages M740–M745, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/58.8.M740
3) , et al. Strength training and detraining effects on muscular strength, anaerobic power, and mobility of inactive older men are intensity dependent.
*By BruceBlaus (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons