Any outdoorsy activity is vastly superior to it due to exposure to fresh air and sunlight. It also tends to be less boring and monotonous than lifting heavy things for some inexplicable reason.
Personally I got religion on weight lifting after reading a book on aging. Losing bone and muscle mass is inevitable with age but if you have a good base you’ve got more to lose. If you keep on weight lifting you lose it much slower. I never got serious about it. I’ve never broken 100kg for a squat and I’m perfectly ok with staying there forever. But I’m going to get weak slower than those who only do cardio and I aim to able to sit up unassisted for as long as possible, and to avoid breaking a hip too.
This is false and shortsighted. Here are some benefits of strength training:
- Muscle mass and bone density maintenance and acquisition, which translates to better overall health. Many physical ailments in old age are related to the degradation of lean body tissues and strength training mitigates that. There is a massive change in trends where even general fitness, health-oriented programs for older trainees now incorporate a substantial resistance-training component.
- Strength acquisition causes performance gains in pretty much every sport with an anaerobic component. Even sports where strength training has been historically ignored like soccer (which I follow closely) are seeing a change of trend, as it has become obvious that stronger is better, and that significant strength gains do not have to come at the expense of other athletic attributes such as agility or speed.
- Strength training fixes posture and mobility issues. For untrained individuals, squatting under a light load (or even bodyweight) will likely reveal a host of problems issuing from the modern sedentary life, such as a lack of strength and mobility in key parts of the body, such as the abs or the hip flexors. Training for strength requires addressing these imbalances and helps greatly in the process too.
> Any outdoorsy activity is vastly superior to it due to exposure to fresh air and sunlight
This is in fact ignorant advice, and false, for the following reasons:
- Few "outdoorsy" activities are close to providing the benefits listed above
- You can train for strength outdoors: with your bodyweight, resistance bands, kettlebells or even a barbell setup. This is a false dichotomy that's being put forward.
It is absolutely fine if you want the bulk of your physical activity to be long walks in nature, but do know that the weight of scientific and practical evidence is overwhelming: you won't be optimizing for general health unless you incorporate some degree of resistance training into your physical activity routine.
> Any outdoorsy activity is vastly superior to it due to exposure to fresh air and sunlight.
Citation needed.
> It also tends to be less boring and monotonous than lifting heavy things for some inexplicable reason.
You're approaching this with the wrong mindset. Its the minimum viable test case for improvement. Many less variables than 'outside in fresh air and sunlight'. I also think you'll find that many people do lift outside, maybe you're stereotyping based on planet fitnessesque gyms that you've frequented.
I tried to simulate these feelings with other activities (soccer, running, bike, even calisthenics). No success. Not the way that barbell stuff do to me. And I'm not even a very strong guy (101kg bench, 130kg squat, 150kg deadlift @ 73kg).