Remember, if you’re old enough, Hans and Franz? Those two fake-muscle-bound Saturday Night Live characters who wanted “to pump you up?”  Well, it turns out the joke is us, not the weight-lifters in the gym. Because, as the most recent medical research has demonstrated, few things are more potent when it comes to enhancing your health and longevity than building up your muscles and your strength – no “Ahnold”-style huge muscles required!

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In earlier decades, most of the exercise health research was devoted to aerobic or endurance exercise which protects your heart and circulation, heart attacks still being our biggest killer. Strength or resistance training (that is, pushing back against resistance, be it weights, your own body weight or elastic bands) took a back seat, even though it is the most effective way to protect mobility in the senior years and protect against life-threatening falls. 

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But the newer eye-opening research shows that the health benefits of fit muscles reach all the way into the brain. When you challenge your muscles with exercise, you are directly pushing back against brain aging, by producing rejuvenating hormone-like chemicals and stimulating the brain’s own protective “growth factors.” Indirectly, you’re enhancing your metabolism and lowering inflammation in ways that benefit the brain as well as the rest of your body. Think of your muscles as the brain’s bodyguard, and here’s a quick look at why I urge you to get into a strength training groove now so your future self can, as they say, live long and prosper:

The proof is in the pudding.

How do we know that muscle strength helps ensure a more age-resistant brain? In one enormous British study that looked at the health records of 190,000 people, grip strength, a good proxy for overall body strength, helped predict dementia risk. The weaker your squeeze, the higher your risk. No surprise then that studies have found that strength training is associated with fewer deaths from any cause – since brain health is so bound up with over-all longevity. One large analysis that crunched the numbers from some sixteen studies found that resistance training was associated with 10-17% fewer deaths from any cause. 

Pumping up your brain.

There have been a number of studies that have shown that strength training can improve the way your brain performs, cognition in a word. We’re talking memory, focus, planning. The potential pay-off may be even bigger for the roughly 20% of seniors  who suffer from a greater than average cognitive slow down with age, not dementia but what gets termed MCI or mild cognitive impairment. In one notable Australian 2022 study, the group that did resistance training for six months not only upped their scores on functional cognitive tests, they changed the structure of their brains! On MRI, the hippocampus region in their brains, crucial for memory and navigating the world, showed a smaller drop in volume than what was experienced by the other study participants.

What’s going on ...under the lid.

Some of the most exciting research investigates how strength training directly stimulates the brain, in other words how your muscles and your gray matter talk to each other. One major way? When muscles forcefully contract, they send a message to the brain to increase production of “growth factors” like BDNF, IGF-1, and VEGF. Think of these proteins as “Miracle-Gro” for the brain, responsible for promoting the production of new neurons and building up the connections between the neurons, the synapses. Short, more intense bursts of exercise seem to provide an extra lift. And then there are hormone-like molecules produced by the contracting muscles themselves, so-called myokines. They travel through the bloodstream and at least one type of myokine, irisin, crosses the blood brain barrier and looks to provide a boost to memory and processing new information. It all adds up to a better thinking machine.

Taming the inflamed brain. 

Strength training exerts a powerful protective effect on the brain indirectly, as well. Resistance training preserves or builds muscle tissue which burns more calories at rest than fat, and eats up glucose when those muscles are firing. The net effect is to help keep metabolism on an even keel. By keeping our blood sugar levels at heathy levels, it acts a guardrail, warding off insulin resistance and, worst case, type 2 diabetes, which both prematurely age the brain. (Some doctors like to call Alzheimer’s “Type 3 diabetes.”) Endurance training is another great metabolism booster as well, a good example of resistance plus endurance providing a potent one-two health punch.

Lifting your mental health. 

Good brain health isn’t just about cognitive sharpness. It also takes in emotional health – and if you’re depressed, it’s very unlikely that your neurons are going to be firing at full speed. Accordingly, two of the most important indirect effects of strength training on brain function involve mood and sleep. (The better you sleep, the less vulnerable you are to low or disordered mood.) In one major analysis that looked at 33 individual clinical trials, strength training was associated with significant drop in symptoms of depression. Other studies have found that resistance training improves sleep quality, which not only safeguards mood but gives your body the time-out it needs to clean out the cellular trash – autophagy – crucial for good brain function. To put it in a nutshell – moving your body, very much including strength training, builds cognitive and emotional resilience. 

Tapping into training – for better brain (and body’s) longevity. 

The healthy brain benefits are now staring us in the face but I’ll admit, starting a strength-training program often requires a little push and some helpful guidance. Enlisting the services of a thoughtful trainer (not of the Hans and Franz variety) is fine idea and there’s plenty of instruction readily available on-line and in exercise classes. But here are some basic tips to help move the process along. 

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• Strength programs work on the principle of “progressive overload,” upping the resistance over time to continue to challenge the muscles. You’re stressing the muscle fibers enough to stimulate muscle growth, but you don’t want to overdo it and invite debilitating soreness or injury. Again, a trainer can be a help finding the right exercises and levels of intensity. 

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• You want to train all the major muscle groups. Government health organizations recommend at least two sessions per week. The type of exercise is up to you: free weights, machines, bodyweight exercises like squats or push-ups, or resistance bands.

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• Here’s a simple formula to give you an idea of what we’re talking about. Shoot for 1–3 sets of 8–12 reps of major muscle-group exercises (legs, chest, back, core). Rest for a minute or two between sets. Progress gradually by adding a little weight or a few reps each week. And don’t be afraid to mix it up. Remember you want to challenge your brain as well as your muscles.

Make it even brainier.

Want extra brain bang for your buck? Add a dual-task challenge. For example, while doing step-ups, recite the alphabet backward or name as many animals as you can. Studies show that combining movement with mental tasks amplifies cognitive benefits, especially in older adults. Might as well go for the gold!