Start Strength Training for Good Health

Remember those boxes of books you carried up the stairs so easily a few years ago? Or the jammed grocery bags you used to grab from your car's trunk two at a time?

Maybe these days you're packing less into storage cartons and shopping sacks, to make them lighter to lift, or enlisting a teenager's help in hauling them. As we get older, many of us find ourselves becoming less strong than we once were. That's to be expected in middle age and onward, especially if you're a woman—right?

It doesn't have to be so. Your healthy future depends upon keeping your muscles strong. Losing strength may result in serious health problems: fractures, imbalance, loss of mobility and inactivity—leading to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Yet those risks can be turned around, and even prevented, with quick and simple strength training exercises.

"Strength training—as in lifting weights? I can't do that!" you may be thinking.

Don't worry. Even if you'd rather pump your own gas than pump iron, the exercises to help you stay strong are easy to do and won't leave you looking like a professional body-builder.