If you’re up and about, and moving much of the day, congratulations: You’re putting yourself on a path toward healthier aging. As we’ve previously posted on many occasions, the less you sit and the more you move, the better your health will likely be well into your later years. But if you’re really searching for the proverbial “Fountain of Youth,” then experts and mounting scientific evidence point you toward a different type of exercise: Resistance Training, also known as Weight Training or Strength Training. These exercises focus on muscles contracting against resistance to increase strength, endurance, and muscle mass. The resistance can come from weights, bands, machines, or even your own body weight. In fact, new research just published in the British Medical Journal reports that the benefits of a demanding weight training regimen can last years beyond the immediate exercise regimen and can help preserve leg strength (an important indicator of broader health and mobility in older adults), thereby allowing you to remain independent and active.

This study, out of the University of Copenhagen, involved 3 randomized groups of retirement-age adults (mean age of 71, 61% of participants female) for a total participation of 369 people. One group participated in a regimen of heavy, supervised resistance training over one year. The second group participated in moderate-level resistance training for the year and the third was a control group and did not participate in any training. The results? The groups were followed for several years after the year of training and those in the heavy resistance training group had measurably stronger leg muscles after 3 years compared to those in the moderate training group and those who did not train at all. Given that age-related loss of muscle mass is common in older adults and that loss of leg strength can put you at risk for falls, along with making walking, stair climbing or even rising out of a chair difficult, this study underscores the value of starting now, if you’re not already doing so, to engage in your own demanding strength training regimen. For more on this study, grab a dumbbell and click here and here.

There are, in fact, researchers who suggest that understanding and focusing on your “strengthspan” is more important than pushing the boundaries of your lifespan. The term strengthspan is intended to reflect how late into your life you can engage in muscle-strengthening activities to move independently and effectively carry out your daily activities. Of course, building up and maintaining muscle well into your later years takes time and effort. You will need to start slowly and build up (and of course check in with your physician, especially if you have a condition such as osteoporosis, in which case very demanding exercise could possibly put your bones at risk), and engage in something called progressive overload, whereby over a series of sessions, you will challenge your muscles with either heavier weights, more repetitions, quicker actions or different movements so that your muscles will slowly tear and rebuild, thereby adding more muscle mass. For a 12-week strength training cycle that allows you to engage in this progressive overload, pick up some light free weights and start here.