Most people do want to be healthy for as many years as they’re going to be alive. Stronger people are harder to kill. As your strength increases, your risk of mortality by all cause reduces. There are lifestyle behaviors that can shorten our life. There are also things we can engage in that lengthen our life. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life.

On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode. Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of episodes that we’ve been in all about how strength training reverses aging. strength training has been shown to reverse certain negative implications of aging. And in this series, we’ve discussed all kinds of different areas that can be improved by strength training. You know, that may be a natural part of people’s expectations of aging. So I hope you’ve been joining us for this series. And today’s conclusion episode is really just called Strength Training Reverses Premature Death.

there’s really no better way to extend one’s life or fight off aging than living longer, right? And so we’re going to talk about the research that shows that strength training can extend your life, which is pretty exciting. And we wanted to camp really quickly on the idea of premature death, because obviously when you hear that term premature death, where my my my my mind goes is like, well, premature compared to what? I don’t have a death date yet that I know. So premature relative to a date I don’t know, what does that even mean?

So Dr. Fisher, how do you think about the idea of premature death versus a natural regular death date? What a fascinating kind of thought topic. In my head, premature death is death before or death earlier than the last possible time that it could occur. So if I do everything that I can, to live longer, then that’s my death date because I should be doing everything I can to live longer. I’m not trying to die earlier. So premature death is anything that’s occurring or any death occurring prior to that for any reason.

Given your genetics, given your environment, given everything at play in your DNA, if you take care of yourself, generally speaking, how long could one live, right? And I think we all understand there are lifestyle behaviors that we can engage in that can shorten our life. There just are, right? But there are also things we can engage in that lengthen our life if we let them. And so that is the whole idea behind this series of episodes. And part of the reason it makes me so excited to think about the ways that we can extend our lifespan and our healthspan by strength training.

So let’s get into some of the research here. Dr. Fisher, you have a few different research studies to share about this. Where would you like to start? Yeah, I have a I have a I have three research studies that I wanted to talk about today. And typically, we’ve only gone into one or maybe two in the past few episodes, but I definitely saw this as the crescendo episode to this series.

So I felt that we could stretch that out a bit, and I’m not going to get into huge amounts of detail because I think the points hit home really clearly. The first study we’re going to look at is a 2012 study, so it’s reasonably old now. The title of the study is, Does Physical Activity Increase Life Expectancy? A Review of the Literature. As I said, it’s a 2012 review of literature published in Journal of Aging. So a really nice kind of study, really nice paper here.

And I’m going to read some statements from each of the studies as we go through this episode. So, they have a kind of an opening statement. Physical activity reduces many major mortality risk factors including arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer. I’m going to pause there because those are things that we’ve talked about numerous times in the podcast that says resistance training can combat those. We’ve talked about the mechanisms as to how it can combat those. We’ve also talked about reducing the risk of those comorbidities and so forth.

And this is saying that they’re actually not just comorbidities, but they’re major causes of mortality. The authors continue, all cause mortality is decreased by Here’s the statistic 30 to 35 % in physically active persons compared to inactive, inactive people. Okay, so that’s our big stat, 30 to 35%. They go on, having reviewed all the literature, so results of 13 studies suggest that regular physical activity is associated with an increase of life expectancy by 0 .4 to 6 .9 years. Now, there’s quite a broad margin in that. A lot of people look at it and go, well, 0 .4 of a year, that’s a handful of months.

Yes, at the lower end of the spectrum, that’s it. But of course, remembering everything we just said at the start, our genetics, our environment, and so forth, they all play a role. So, you know, we’re asking for physical activity to combat a lot, maybe a lot of other things. So, and this is allowing for those factors. So if you’re a smoker or a drinker, and engage in other, you know, potentially negative lifestyle habits, resistance training might not do as much for you, but if you were doing a lot of other healthy habits with sleep and nutrition and so on and so forth, up to 6 .9 years, up to seven years added to your life by engaging in physical activity.

To me, that’s quite an amazing statistic. And it’s potentially worth clarifying that was physical activity. That wasn’t just strength training. That was, you know, the typical PA guidelines of, you know, muscle strengthening activity twice a week. And then some component of cardiovascular exercise. Wow.

That is pretty cool. So yeah, I mean, that’s the difference between living to 71 and 78, potentially. And think of all the good years you may have in there, right? Again, we never know our age, but that is, just to put it in perspective, a big chunk of time that could be very, very meaningful to other people in your life. So that’s amazing. Yeah, and based on the other episodes from this series, we’ve talked about preventing cognitive decline, preserving functional capacity, appearance, sleep quality, and psychological status association with sleep quality, so mood and things like that.

So, you know, that might be seven incredibly high quality years of life. And, you know, It’s been put to me in the past that when we reach that retirement age, we tend to think, these are the years that I’ve worked all my life for, I’m now able to relax and enjoy life. But a lot of the time, that’s when we see health start to deteriorate because of the age we’re at. And what we actually want is our health to remain so that we can enjoy those loosely twilight years, let’s say. Yeah.

And we may not get that, though, if we don’t make that investment in our younger years, right? Or we can actually ensure that a lot more by making the investment of being active and strength training in our younger years. Yeah, absolutely. And the term investment is so important because that’s exactly what it is. So the next study is resistance training and mortality risk, a systematic review and meta -analysis. So we’ve talked about what those are before.

A systematic review is a big review of the body of literature and a meta -analysis basically takes all the data from those studies and combines them into one single kind of data set to run analyses. This is a 2022 publication in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. Now I’m going to jump back to the title for a second because this wasn’t talking about physical activity, this was specifically talking about resistance training. One of the things that I love about this is for a long time there was talk that strength reduces risk of all -cause mortality. So strength basically reduces risk of death by any cause. But this isn’t saying strength, this is saying the act of resistance training.

So it’s not looking at people who are born strong or who have the genetics to be strong, it’s looking at people who simply engage in the behavior of resistance training almost regardless of their strength. And I think that’s a really important point. So the authors say, and I quote, A total of 10 studies were included in the meta -analyses. Compared with undertaking no resistance training, undertaking any amount of resistance training reduced the risk of all -cause mortality 15%, cardiovascular disease mortality by 19%, and cancer mortality by 14%. a maximal risk reduction of 27 % was observed at around 60 minutes per week of resistance training.

So again, so unbelievable statistics, basically saying by engaging in resistance training, you’re reducing your risk of mortality by those percentages. That is so amazing. And it’s around 60 minutes a week or a couple workouts that are challenging per week. Is there a duration over the course of, you know, needing to do it for a minimum amount of time in order to see these decreased risk percentages? I don’t think that this study actually went into those details, but let’s assume that there are benefits, that the benefits are greater. You know, when we say reduce the risk of all -cause mortality by 15%, it’s probably 15 % if you’re engaging in it for a longer period of time, if you kind of do it for a week or so, that probably isn’t going to reap the results.

So I think that’s a fair assumption. But yeah, the key for me was around 60 minutes per week. I’m even going to say that there’s no benefit beyond that and diminishing returns even at that point. So the exercise coach philosophy of two 20 -minute workouts per week is exactly within that. And while many people listening to the podcast will want to go and train for two hour sessions and three or four or five days per week. And we’ve talked about the negative implications of overtraining in the past.

Again, if people choose to do that, that’s okay. But from a health perspective, there are clearly no benefits to training in that dosage. Yeah. I am picturing… So here’s an image that is coming to my mind. I mean, if you had a

app that says, here’s you, here’s your life, and here’s your DNA, and here’s all of your genetics. And today, you have a 75 % chance of developing cardiovascular disease, and a 65 % chance of developing diabetes, and a 90 % chance of developing cancer by age, whatever. That would be a little scary to have that information at your fingertips, like if I knew this, right, if I could know it, but then what if you it’s kind of like a flash on the screen, but wait, you know, what if you could reduce your risk by this much, and you engage in strength training, and you got to saw and see those numbers decrease, you’d feel like you’re making very good progress, you we have no way to know this stuff. But but knowing it, even at a subconscious level or even a factual level, I’m decreasing my risk. I’m putting myself in a better position right now today for these things that are down the line. You know, that would be pretty cool if we if we had that information, you know, so.

I, if we had that information, it would be so eyeopening and it would obviously lead us down a path of probably some different life choices. You know, if everything that we did, if, if when you pick up a, I don’t know, a drink or you make a life choice, you could see in the corner of the screen, like a video game or crystal ball, like you said, this is increasing your risk of death by, or continuing this activity will take two years off your life expectancy. Well, like you said, it would be very scary, but if we had that data immediately, we would almost certainly choose to engage in different activities that are good for us, that will increase our health span and our lifespan. Right. And just if you have somebody in your life and you’re concerned about one of these things, there’s just no reason not to strength train today. You’re helping your future self out greatly if you’re already concerned about one of these things is what I’m taking away from these stats.

Yeah. So the final study that I wanted to touch on today was a 2026 paper. So we’re now moved right up to this year. The title of the paper is Muscular Strength and Mortality in Women Aged 63 to 99 Years. And this was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, so JAMA. So very highbrow, very high impact academic peer review journal.

And as it says in the title, it’s looking at muscular strength and the relationship between muscular strength and mortality in women of that age group. So 63 to 99. So quite a large age margin. So what they did is they looked at hand grip strength, which is a proxy for upper body strength. So I was talking with somebody a while back about hand grip strength. forgive me, this is one of my tangents, about hand -grip strength.

And they said, oh, hand -grip strength is linked to mortality and quality of life. I said, yeah, absolutely. And they said, oh, so I do a lot of grip training. And I sort of said, well, I don’t think it’s grip strength specifically. I think it’s that grip strength is a proxy for these other tests of strength, our chest strength, our back strength, our arm strength, and so on and so forth. So it’s not that grip strength is the most important thing to train.

You don’t need to go into your studio and say to your coach, Hey, where do I train my grip? It’s the grip strength is a proxy for upper body strength as a whole. And it’s a very good proxy. So they looked at grip strength, and they broke people down into quartiles of grip strength from the strongest quartile to the lowest quartile. And then they did one of the tests of strength. And this was the time in seconds it took

completed five unassisted chair stands. So that’s a sit to stand test that is, again, a common test of strength and functional capacity in older adults. You basically are sat in a chair and you rise from that chair five times unassisted. You can’t put your hands on the handrails or anything like that. So, you know, it’s a good test of lower body strength and endurance as well as to some extent balance and functional capacity. And again, they looked at the time it took people to do that, the quickest being the best performance and the highest quartile and the weakest or the slowest being the lowest quartile.

So they’ve got this sample. So the sample was 5 ,472 women with a mean age of 79 years. They discussed that a good percentage of those were different ethnicities, black, Hispanic, Latina, white, and so forth. So it’s a good representative sample of the population. And what they do is they then follow up those people about eight and a half years later. So they’ve done this test on these 5 ,500 women, and eight and a half years later, they go and they see where they’re at.

And the primary thing they’re looking for, and this is going to sound a little bit morbid, so forgive me, but the primary thing they’re looking for is how many of those people have died. Okay. So there were 1 ,964 deaths within that time period. And the author is going to say, controlling for age and sociodemographic lifestyle and clinical factors, significant inverse trends in mortality were evident across quartiles two through four of grip strength and chair stand time. So basically what they’re saying is going from the weakest quartile, and the slowest quartile for grip strength and for chest and time respectively as you move up and down. so quartile two, quartile three, quartile four being the strongest or the fastest, there were reductions in mortality.

And they report them as something called a hazard ratio. Now that’s academic vernacular, and it’s completely normal within the academic literature, and many people will read that and might be confused. But hazard ratio is really just the ratio of something occurring in a treatment group compared to a control group. So effectively, If it’s a one -to -one ratio, or if it’s a ratio of one, I should say, then there’s no difference between conditions. And what they’re saying is there was a difference between these groups. So let me just clarify what they actually found.

So in the weakest quartile for hand grip to the next weakest, so effectively quartile two, there was a 6 % lower risk of death. If we move up another quartile to quartile three, there was a 15 % lower risk of death. And if we move to the top quartile, the strongest quartile for hand grip strength, there was a 33 % lower risk of death compared to the weakest quartile. So big numbers there as you progress through those quartiles. If we look at chest and time, we see exactly the same trend. Up to quartile two, there was a 21 % lower risk of death.

By quartile three, there was a 24 % lower risk of death and by quartile four, there was a 37 % lower risk of death. Now, one of the things that’s quite interesting in that is that actually lower body strength can be, to some extent, more of a predictor of mortality. We saw a big jump between quartile one and quartile two of 21 % lower risk of death there. So lower body strength can be really, really important, potentially more so than upper body strength. But what was fascinating about that is they both culminated around the same statistic.

By being as strong in the upper body and the lower body as you can, you’re reducing your risk of death. And this is all cause mortality. All cause mortality is death by any cause. You’re reducing the risk of death by 33 to 37%. Wow. So what I just heard you say, they’re two sides of the same coin.

The weaker you are, the closer you are to mortality or the higher chance of mortality you have. The stronger you are, the lower the chance that you have of dying early or the farther you are from mortality, right? Exactly. That’s amazing. Exactly. It’s a really amazing statistic and it’s sad because to some extent I’m almost desensitized to this because this has been around in the academic literature for 20 something years, but it’s just never given the credit in the mainstream media that it should get and many people listening to this podcast might be shocked by these statistics.

But they’re absolutely true, and I’ve spoken of three different articles today, but there are numerous other articles that support this literature and say the same thing, or even greater statistics with regards to reducing risk of mortality by increasing strength. Now, there’s one final point I want to add to this, because, of course, they looked at muscular strength. But one of the things they also looked at was people’s engagement in other physical activity. So they looked at, uh, we said at the start of the show, the first paper looked at physical activity guide, physical activity recommendations, which are by lifespan relating to physical activity as a whole. So strength training and cardiovascular training. Now this paper said that there was almost no relationship between those that strength train and those that engage in, you know, cardiovascular exercise.

some people did both, some people did one, some people did the other, some people did neither, and so forth. And they even went on to say, and they had this statement, I’ll read this quote out directly from the research paper, muscle strength was associated with lower mortality even in women not meeting guideline recommended activity levels. So this is saying that those increases or those, sorry, reductions in risk of death are evident even in people that aren’t meeting the recommended physical activity levels. So again, evidence for not having to do as much strength training as many people think, and certainly not engaging in as much cardiovascular exercise as has been suggested by, you know, governing bodies and World Health Organization and so forth. OK, well, so that’s great news, right? Especially if you don’t like to exercise.

Right. You don’t want to spend a lot of time strength training. You don’t have to to get these benefits. Yeah. Yeah. So just some phenomenal statistics.

And of course, we started the show by talking about the resistance training kind of reduces premature death, when many people will be saying, oh, well, this paper talks about a lower risk of death and so forth. Let’s be absolutely clear. It stands to reason, if you’re less likely to die from something, you’re going to live longer. So in a study like this, where it’s looked at strength and it’s compared it to mortality, well, if people died, then that was their death. That was their, let’s call it premature death because it was clearly avoidable because of their muscular strength. If they had increased their strength and moved up quartiles, they would have lived longer.

So I think that’s the kind of emphasis of the show. So Dr. Fisher, what do you think is the most important takeaway that a listener should glean from these stories? studies and this information? Well, there’s a number. First of all, I think, you know, we were talking before the show and we were talking about living with intent. And I think we’re in an environment now where so many things almost happen to us.

We’re almost passive to all of the things happening. And we don’t necessarily make time for us to to do the things that we know we should do. So the deliberate choices over you know, things that will help enhance our quality of life and our longevity are so important. But these three papers, clearly, there’s a trend across them. We’re talking about engaging in physical activity, certainly engaging in resistance training, and then of course, being stronger. So being stronger is the main thing.

And you’ve heard me say this before in presentations, and this is kind of the go -to line that I always use. Stronger people are harder to kill. The evidence is very, very clear that as your strength increases, your risk of mortality by all cause reduces. So your strength can really be a deterrent against death by all cause. So, yeah. And if there’s no clearer take home than that, I don’t know what to say.

I 100 % am with you. It is the most compelling thing, you know, that we can say about aging. Strength training is like magic in that way. And so I think it’s very, very inspiring. And I know, you know, I know sometimes the idea of longevity can get a bad reputation. Sometimes people are like, I just want to live my life and it really doesn’t matter to me how many years I live.

I’ve heard people say that. I want to make the choices I want to make today and it really doesn’t matter to me when I die. If that’s you, I understand that sentiment. and I’ve heard people say that but I what I think that most people do want and we’ve made this point many times on this podcast is To be healthy for as many years as they’re going to be alive And so with this information in this podcast today here’s a mental experiment that I want to challenge you with if you’re listening today is If I had a crystal ball And I told you, you know, at age 70, you are going to develop osteoporosis. You’re going to receive a diagnosis of osteoporosis. You’re going to have very brittle bones and you’re going to get warned by that by your doctor.

Then at age 75, you’re going to take a fall and that fall is going to land you in a rehabilitation center. where you will need help going to the bathroom every day. You will need help walking. You’ll need help standing. You’ll have to eat. You know, you’re going to basically live an assisted living for the remaining five years of your life, and you’re never going to fully recover.

And that will be the last decade of your life. But if you participate in resistance training today, you can avoid that. Would you do it? I mean, it stands to reason that I think everybody listening would do it. And I would be shocked by people that choose not to. So.

And I think I sympathize with the fact that it really is hard to imagine yourself that far in the future. It is. And I understand that. But if you knew that this reality would be yours, but you have the ability to choose differently, you know, why wouldn’t you, right? Why wouldn’t you? And the truth is, we don’t know.

But what we do know, based on what you just said today, is that we have some agency in how we age. And no matter what might happen in our personal lives, in our futures, we can make all of it less bad and enjoy it. life as for longer if we strength train today. And that is what the research shows. And so I don’t know of a better takeaway of this episode of just to make the case of how compelling strength training can be for your overall life, both today and in the future. as we’ve talked about many times.

So thank you for joining us on this series of podcasts. If this brings up other questions to you, please go to our website and submit those questions to us at strengthchangeseverything . com. We want to talk about questions that you have. If you want us to go deeper on anything we’ve discussed in this series or ever before on the podcast, we would love to hear from you. Just visit us at strengthchangeseverything .

com. Click on the orange submit a question button. and share what you have to say and we will address it in a future episode. But again, thank you for joining us on the series. We hope you enjoyed it and learned a lot and that your fire has been fueled for the good you are doing by strength training. Keep it up.

We will see you next week on the podcast and until then, we hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode.

Here’s to you and your best health.