Elon Muscular

The libraryStrength

Resistance Training

Lifting takes 15% to 21% off death from any cause.

Also called Strength Training, Weight Training, Weightlifting, Resistance Exercise, Strength & Conditioning

A practice

Who it's forAny man who only does cardio, or nothing at all.

The item

Three squares: proven in human trials. Two: a strong signal. One: early human data. Striped: the trials disagree.

Start today

  1. Put two heavy sessions in your diary this week and treat them like work.

Why it works

When a muscle meets more tension than it is used to, the fiber senses it and turns it into a growth signal through mTOR. That raises protein synthesis for a day or two after a session. Repeated sessions where building outpaces breakdown produce the size gain. Early strength gains are mostly in the nerves rather than the muscle itself. That is why people get clearly stronger before they look any different.

What people say

Here is what doctors, influencers and men online say about Resistance Training, word for word.

Experts

Clinicians, authorities

  • “Research shows that strength training can play a role in slowing bone loss, and can even build bone.”

    Harvard Health Publishing

  • “Unless you are doing strength training, you will become weaker and less functional.”

    Harvard Health Publishing (Hebrew SeniorLife physician-in-chief quoted)

  • “participating in 90 to 120 minutes a week of strength training was correlated with a 13% lower risk of dying from any cause”

    Medical News Today, reporting a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health cohort study · 13% lower all-cause mortality, 19% lower cardiovascular mortality, 27% lower neurological-disease mortality at 90-120 min/week

Gurus

Podcasts, channels, influencers

  • “resistance training performed with only moderate loads, multiple sets, and just two sessions per week was shown to capture most of the strength benefit”

    longevity-physician newsletter article · two sessions per week captured 77% of maximal strength gains

  • “People who do any resistance training are roughly 21% less likely to die from any cause during follow-up than people who do none.”

    coaching-company guide · 21% lower all-cause mortality; 2 to 4 sessions a week; 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week

  • “MV is surprisingly low—typically around 6 working sets per muscle group per week”

    hypertrophy-coaching company blog article · about 6 working sets per muscle group per week to maintain

Regular people

Forums, reviews, comments

  • “swinging kettle bells, à la the simple and sinister book caused medial epicondylitis for me (buggered up the tendons in both my elbows)”

    Hacker News thread 'Why strength training? A programmer's perspective' (86 points, 161 comments, Oct 2024)

  • “Training for “longevity” is incredibly easy. Like two 30 minute “resistance training” days per week is enough to maximize longevity benefits.”

    r/naturalbodybuilding · 15 points

  • “at the end of the 3rd month I was benching more than my old max weight for 5 sets of 5”

    Apple App Store listing for a 5x5 lifting-program app (4.9 stars, 77K ratings)

The studies

Every study behind this page.

Words on this page

PMID
A study's ID number in PubMed, the public index of medical research.

Lift heavy twice a week.

Emergency: call 911.

I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. This is self-education. Talk to a physician who has your history before you change anything.