Lifting weights is key to staying healthy in your 70s and beyond… and just a year of pumping iron can reduce body fat and increase strength in the long run, experts reveal

Forget bowling or leisurely swimming – retirees should take up weightlifting if they want a healthy retirement, research suggests.

Resistance training was found to provide strength benefits that lasted years after retirement, making it an ideal exercise for older adults.

People naturally lose muscle function as they age, with faltering grip and leg strength seen as a strong predictor of death in the elderly.

Resistance training, which can use weights, body weight or resistance bands, has been shown to help prevent this.

Researchers wanted to investigate the long-term effects of a one-year supervised resistance training program using heavy weights.

With participants averaging 71 years of age, 451 retirees were split into groups of either one year of heavy resistance training, moderate intensity training or no additional exercise in addition to their usual activities.

The assigned weights participated in programs three times a week, while the moderate-intensity workout performed circuits, including bodyweight exercises and resistance bands, for the same period.

Each exercise in the heavy weight group involved three sets of six to 12 repetitions, using between 70 and 85 percent of the maximum weight the person could lift, for each repetition.

Researchers wanted to investigate the long-term effects of a one-year supervised resistance training program using heavy weights. But bodyweight resistance training can be just as effective as any workout

Bone and muscle strength and body fat levels were measured at the start of the study and then again after one, two and four years.

After four years, it was found that those in the heavy weight group had maintained their leg strength over time, while those who did no exercise or moderate-intensity exercise had lost strength.

The researchers wrote in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine: ‘In well-functioning older adults of retirement age, a year of vigorous resistance training can produce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.’

There was no difference between the three groups in leg extensor strength – the ability to press a pedal as hard and as fast as possible; handgrip strength (a measure of overall strength) and lean leg mass (weight minus body fat), with a decrease in all of these factors.

The researchers wrote in the journal BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine: ‘In well-functioning older adults of retirement age, a year of vigorous resistance training can produce long-lasting beneficial effects by preserving muscle function.’

The level of visceral fat – which is stored internally around the organs – increased in those who did not exercise, while it remained the same in the two exercise groups.

The authors, including from the University of Copenhagen, said people in the study were generally more active, taking an average of almost 10,000 steps a day than the wider population.

They added: ‘This study provides evidence that resistance training with heavy loads at retirement age can have long-term effects over several years.

‘The results therefore provide tools for practitioners and policy makers to encourage older people to participate in heavy resistance training.’