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It's popular at the moment to encourage exercise among elderly people, but what kind of exercise works best? An Australian group has compared resistance training in elderly people to other forms of exercise. It's very popular at the moment to encourage exercise among elderly people, but that can mean all sorts of things, from a bit of stretching and walking, to pumping iron. What works? Well that depends on what you're trying to achieve. An Australian group has compared resistance training in elderly people to other forms of exercise which aim at flexibility and a gentle cardiovascular workout. Resistance training is quite hard work and gets you to do about 80 per cent of your maximum effort lifting a weight. And for people who've never even thought of raising a dumbbell, that weight could, to start with, be just your arm. The benefits the researchers assessed, were useful everyday things like the ability to go from sitting to standing, walking pace and how far forward the person could lean without toppling over. After ten weeks of once or twice weekly sessions, all these measures were significantly better than if the person had just gone through a milder program focussed more on flexibility. So it seems that whatever your age, if strength's what's needed, there's no substitute for a bit of hard yakka.
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