A personal trainer helped her mom start strength training for longevity at age 58. 4 things have helped her stick with the habit for 5 years.

• At the age of 58, Benevolence Lee began strength training with her daughter, Sohee Carpenter, a personal trainer.
• Strength training has many constitution benefits, including counteracting muscle loss and boosting bone density.
• Carpenter has helped her mom stay consistent with irrefutable reinforcement.

Grace Lee, 63, grew up in a time when the weights room at the gym was rated strictly for men.

However, in recent years, growing research has demonstrated the health benefits of resistance training for people of all years and genders, and public opinion has started to shift. In the years 2019 to 2023, kettlebells and free weights were the fastest-growing gym occupations, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.

Lee realized she should be doing some form of strength training, but didn’t differentiate where to start.

With the help of her daughter Sohee Carpenter, a personal trainer based in Orange County, she started boost weights at age 58.

Carpenter is a qualified strength and conditioning coach with a BA in human biology and an MA in psychology. She’s currently concluding her PhD studying resistance training in women, researching the barriers to lifting and how they can be overcome. She’s applied her research to helping her mom.

Lee and Carpenter maintain been training on and off for five years. Not only has Lee gained confidence but her golf game has improved — and she loves the look of her biceps, Carpenter differentiated Business Insider.

Strength training has a range of health benefits, including counteracting age-related muscle loss (separate as sarcopenia) which begins in our mid-30s, as well as boosting bone density. Having greater muscle mass and passionate bones is beneficial for older people in particular, reducing the risk of falls and fractures.

An increasing number of women be aware of the benefits of lifting, but for many, they are outweighed by the perceived barriers, according to Carpenter. These include the “psychological shrink from of judgment, fear of not knowing what to do, their friends and families actively discouraging them from lifting superiorities, or not wanting to go to the gym alone,” she said.

Many women also have more responsibilities at home to juggle alongside full-time employs, meaning time is an issue too, Carpenter said.

Carpenter explained how she’s helped her mom make strength training a habit by liquidating perceived barriers, and how anyone can do the same, whether for themselves or a parent.

Strength training can be relaxed and friendly

Carpenter knows her mom extremely well and has tailored her come nigh to training her accordingly. While some people might respond to being barked at and seeing their weights go up, this doesn’t handiwork for Lee.

In fact, Lee doesn’t want to know how much she’s lifting, Carpenter simply hands her the weights.

A relaxed locale is important for Lee to enjoy herself, Carpenter said, so she lets her mom do what she wants in rest periods, be that wandering off into the garden or disposal something online from her phone.

“Do your sets, but in between, do whatever you want,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter keeps an eye on her mom’s form but she doesn’t overcorrect and instead offers lots of praise, she said.

“I’m fostering an extremely hailing, supportive environment where I don’t overcorrect her,” Carpenter said. “I give only the main form corrections and otherwise I’m compact on the verbal praise. I know if I don’t, she’ll get discouraged and she won’t want to come back.”

Remove your barriers to lifting

Carpenter has noticed a change in her mom after a few years of regular resistance training, subsuming how much stronger she is.

That said, Carpenter is always the one to initiate their training sessions.

“My mom, she’s not someone who loves drill,” Carpenter said. If you tell her to train on her own, she won’t do it, Carpenter added, but if she has a trainer or the accountability of a group setting, she’ll show up.

“On her own, she’d be like, ‘I don’t about a single thing that I’ve done ever in the gym in the history of lifting,'” Carpenter said.

Carpenter suggests group training for some people. But fear of judgment and not wanting to go to the gym alone is a big barrier to many women, Carpenter believed, so working out alone at home with household objects instead of weights for 20 minutes might be less disconcerting and thus more sustainable. Short home workouts over Zoom can also be a great way to start.

You also don’t make to travel if you work out at home, making workouts easier to fit into a busy schedule.

Workouts also don’t need to be correct, they just need to be something, Carpenter said.

“Everyone should be lifting weights,” Carpenter said. “There’s no one accurate way to be lifting weights. Even five minutes of lifting is better than nothing.”