There are pushups, pirouettes and pumping iron. Calisthenics, curls and CrossFit. Whatever your preferred form of exercise or work-out style, there’s bound to be something that strikes your fancy. And that, a new study suggests, is better than anything else.
Researchers from the American College of Sports Medicine parsed through 137 systematic reviews, analyzed data from more than 30,000 study participants and emerged with updated guidance for who are interested in strength training … or trying to be.
The advice, which happens to be the first major overhaul to resistance training recommendations in 17 years, is simple: Do what you’ll keep doing.
That’s it.
Sure, there are good habits. The best kind of resistance training tackles all major muscle groups a minimum of twice a week. But access to a gym is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. Plenty of good, and even measurable changes, can be accomplished with a resistance band, or just your own body weight.
Notably, these recommendations come from the increasing amount of research conducted on muscle health and aging.
What matters, researchers say, is what you like to do for strength training. That, and liking it enough to do it more than once, end up being the most important metric for folks who want to prioritize not only their waistline, but their capability and general strength as they age. While there is flexibility in how you get your resistance training, researchers emphasize there is no denying how essential it is.
Now, a little bit of bad news:
At the end of the day, it still means you’ll have to get up from the couch.