Key takeaways
- Strength training is an important habit for healthy aging because muscle preservation supports metabolic, bone, joint, and functional health.
- Full-body resistance training two to three times a week is ideal, but start at your current fitness level and don’t push too hard at first.
- The main goal is long-term independence: Maintaining your strength can help you continue to do ordinary things, like getting out of a chair, shopping, and moving through daily life on your own as you age.
Longevity is yet another moment, to put it mildly. There are supplements, sleep trackers, cold plunges, carefully timed meals, and enough “anti-aging” advice to turn healthy living into a second job—or worse, a full-blown obsession.
But how Your age is often influenced by much more ordinary habits, including how you move or how often you stay in contact with other people. To give you a simpler, more sustainable, and less expensive starting point for healthier aging, we asked a longevity doctor for a truly helpful habit she makes a point of practicing over and over again.
The habit of healthy aging that this doctor prioritizes
The one habit that longevity doctor Jennifer Timmons gives the highest priority to for healthy aging is strength training. Dr. Timmons spent over a decade practicing traditional primary care before pursuing advanced training in functional and longevity medicine. For her, preserving muscle means much more than staying strong and looking great as one enters their golden years.
“We lose about 3 to 5 percent of our muscle mass per year after the age of 35, and maintaining muscle mass is very important as we age,” says Timmons. “It helps with metabolic health and regulating your glucose; it helps with bone health and keeping your bones strong to prevent osteoporosis; and it helps with joint health by keeping your joints strong.”
According to Dr. Timmons, the most important benefit is its undisputed impact on independence: “The everyday tasks we want to continue doing – being able to get in and out of a car on our own, getting in and out of a car, and running our own errands – as well as the activities we want to continue doing as we age, all depend on maintaining our muscle mass,” she says.
To help slow his own muscle loss, Dr. Timmons aims to strength train at least two to three times per week. She also doesn’t believe in designated milestone days. “I recommend a full-body program where you train the major muscle groups throughout your body, rather than splitting the days into upper and lower body,” she explains. “So full body two to three times a week, using a progressive overload method where you gradually increase the weights or reps over time.”
If you’re short on equipment or don’t want to sign up for a gym membership, Dr. Timmons recommends bodyweight resistance training, using your own body with big, full-body movements like squats or push-ups. “You can modify as needed, such as doing push-ups on your knees,” she says.
Is strength training more important than other healthy habits?
Of course, healthy aging is not guaranteed by longevity-focused behavior alone. Eating well, getting enough sleep, managing stress, and maintaining strong relationships can all impact your long-term quality of life. Despite this, Dr. Timmons still chooses strength training as his number one habit for healthy aging.
“It’s really, really important for maintaining independence,” she says, citing a recent meta-analysis on older adults. “The study confirmed that strength training twice a week contributed to functional capacity and independence in daily tasks.” Specifically, participants who underwent resistance training were able to get up from a chair faster. This simple chair climb may not seem like a big deal, but it counts! Living to age 80 or beyond is one thing, but being able to get up, move around, and take care of yourself once you get there is another.
For anyone tempted to overhaul their entire routine in the name of longevity, Dr. Timmons recommends starting smaller to best increase strength. “Start with just 10 minutes twice a week, and increase every few weeks by 5 minutes until you reach about an hour twice a week of full-body exercise,” advises Dr. Timmons. “As you get stronger, you can increase the amount of weight you use beyond just bodyweight.”
If you have the mental bandwidth for just one additional longevity-focused habit, make sure you also eat enough protein. Dr. Timmons recommends consuming about 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight per day to help maintain muscle mass.
Gn Health
