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Strong Women Stay Young

What a joy to find the perfect beginning strength-training book aimed at older women! So many books on strength training for women seem aimed at either making us macho (unrelated to most women's goals), keeping us wimpy (downright dangerous for all of us), or misleading us with useless, harmful, inappropriate and/or silly information. This book by Tufts University researcher Miriam Nelson and her lively co-writer Sarah Wernick is what you've been looking for if you're a woman who wants to stay vital and active in later years -- especially if you don't know what strength training has to do with that.

Nelson is one of the famous group of Tufts University researchers who made startling discoveries about the ability of older people to radically increase strength, balance and independence through weight-training programs. Nelson's own research involved middle-aged and older women. The bottom line: Whatever your age, a careful, progressive strength-training program will help you get dramatically stronger in much less time and with much less work than you think. Nelson's subjects also improved balance and flexibility, halted bone loss, and even restored bone, reducing the risk of osteoporotic fractures. They looked better, felt better, had more energy, and got firmer and trimmer.

Strong Women Stay Young presents the concepts and practical program developed at Tufts. The take-home message is that you can enhance your strength and quality of life -- and delay the aging process -- whether you're 40, 50, 70 or 90. Could you ask for more from a program that only takes two 40-minute sessions a week?

The illustrated strength-training program here is a surprise: just eight basic exercises to hit the major muscle groups, each needing only dumbbells or ankle weights. Each exercise clearly presents the point of the exercise, the steps, where you'll feel the effort, appropriate posture, how many to do, and tips for knowing you're doing it right. Each exercise is well-explained and illustrated with drawings of normal women, not bodybuilders. A bonus chapter presents six more strength training options to add or substitute later, so your program grows and stays fresh as you get stronger. If you decide you want to join a health club, there's a chapter on how to use some typical machines you'll find there. There's also plenty of information about muscles, bones and nutrition.

Many women respond fearfully to the idea of strength training. They don't want to "bulk up" -- they just want to "tone." They recoil from the grotesque look of overdeveloped bodybuilders and think strength training leads to loss of femininity. They don't realize these essential facts about muscles:

1. If you don't use 'em, you lose 'em. Muscles don't just stay the same with disuse -- they lose strength and, eventually, function. Women who don't exercise start to lose bone and muscle mass starting about age 40.
2. If you do use 'em right, you can gain strength, function, balance, energy, independence, stronger bones, flexibility, and a trim-and-tight physique -- even if you're out of shape when you start out.
3. You can make dramatic gains in muscle strength with two sessions a week, but you must use weights or other resistance heavy enough to force the muscles to get stronger. Dozens of repetitions using the lightest weights will minimally improve muscle strength. Soup cans just won't do it. Weights heavy enough to make the muscles react will do it.
4. It isn't enough to do aerobic exercise. Muscles need site-specific attention. You can run or hike all day long and still lose arm, back, shoulder and chest strength.
5. You will not get the female bodybuilder look from strength training -- only more shapely. The women in Nelson's study wound up smaller, not larger. They had bigger muscles, but less body fat, and since muscle is denser than fat, they looked trimmer. Women who get masculine-looking from weight lifting use monstrously heavy weights, work out many hours a day, diet stringently, have more testosterone (male hormone) than normal, and often take anabolic steroids.

Strong Women Stay Young is a scientifically-based strength-training book for women of all ages who want to get strong and stay strong for the rest of their lives. For more information, visit their web site at http://www.strongwomen.com. Get two copies -- one for yourself, and one for your mother.

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