According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strength training is especially important in older adults because of the tendency to lose muscle mass and bone density with aging. A recent study backs up this claim by comparing a group of elderly exercisers with a group of elderly non-exercisers who were on a diet to lose weight. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, the journal of the American Physiological Society.
Researchers evaluated a group of 64 participants who were 60-75 years of age and were either overweight or obese; all were sedentary at the beginning of the study. The researchers divided the participants into three groups: exercise only, diet only, or exercise plus diet. Researchers measured weight loss and task performance after a year. Although the participants who were dieting did lose weight, body composition tests proved that they lost mainly muscle mass, whereas the exercise group gained muscle mass. Further, the diet-only group lost efficiency in performing the exercise tasks, whereas the exercise group increased task performance.
Source: IHRSA
