Hi friends~
I’ve been thinking of my grandma.
Pearl was adorable. She wore house dresses, had a tight, short perm (do perms even exist anymore?), and was incredibly cheerful, funny, and energetic. I remember when I was a young teenager and she was 60+ years old, riding my bike with her perched on my handlebars – her feet dangling in her sensible, sturdy shoes, house dress fluttering, that curly perm intact. She was super fun, silly, soft, and snuggly too, and always ready for anything.
When I was in my late twenties and thirties, busy raising two, then three (of my eventual six) kids, I used to picture what I’d look like as a grandmother. In my mind, I was going to look exactly like my own beloved grandma, Pearl.
I assumed it was a given that I would age just like her, and I was entirely okay with that. She lived a vibrant life and died at 92.
Moving Beyond the image
These days, when I scroll through social media and see excellent fitness advice encouraging young women to train for their elder years – lifting to protect bone density and avoid frailty – I applaud. But at the same time, I wonder if they truly realize how incredible aging can actually look and feel. Reaching old age isn’t a slow fade, it’s not an arc, heading downward with age; it’s a staircase, that can be a time of rebellious, radical living. It’s about aging strong, resilient, and joyful.
Most of those fitness accounts feature young-ish women talking about the future. Well, I’m here to talk about the actual old lady they’re training to be.
It’s about functional capability, absolutely, but I won’t deny that I love looking strong just as much as being strong. I am thrilled that the cultural messaging is finally shifting toward encouraging women to build muscle, pushing back against a toxic “skinny culture” that has starved women of their power for generations.
Yes, resistance training builds visible muscle. And I am absolutely delighted that some of my shirts and jackets have become snug in the shoulders and across my back over my years of strength training.
The Real Power of Healthspan
Besides looking formidable and being able to lift and carry kids, haul bags of soil, or hit lift heavy deadlifts, being strong is about living well. It’s about feeling personally empowered and keeping your world expansive. It’s called maximizing “healthspan” – the period of life spent in good health.
The benefits of lifting weights as an older woman are backed by undeniable science:
- Lowering Mortality Risk: Combined muscle-strengthening and aerobic exercises are proven to reduce all-cause mortality, drastically lowering risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
- Fighting Frailty and Fractures: Building muscle preserves bone mass. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) emphasizes that resistance training is the ultimate defense against age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) and debilitating falls.
- Brain Plasticity and Mood: Pushing against resistance triggers neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and grow. Studies tracked by the American Heart Association (AHA) show that lifting weights actively preserves cognitive function and fights off dementia.
- Cellular & Skin Health: Believe it or not, scientists have found that resistance exercise actually rejuvenates skin cells, improving skin thickness and tissue structure by altering gene expression, as detailed in a recent Nature Scientific Reports study.
Busting the “Bulk” and “Injury” Fears
To the women who still fear that picking up heavy weights will make them look “bulky” – it is highly unlikely. Without a deliberate, massive caloric surplus (eating significantly more food than you burn), you simply will not build massive size. Furthermore, women naturally possess much lower levels of testosterone than men, making hyper-muscularity incredibly difficult to achieve. If you want to get big (and some women do!), it requires years of dedicated, hyper-specific programming and eating like it’s a full-time job.
And to those women who tell me they fear getting injured from strength training? I gently tell them that they would be wise to fear frailty instead.
Inheriting Resilience
My grandma Pearl never “exercised”, but she was constantly active. She radiated happiness and embodied that classic Polish women’s resilience – remarkable capability, independence, and a refusal to be broken by circumstance. She taught me how to snap chewing gum (a trick that deeply annoyed my own kids as they grew up) and told silly stories about losing her sunglasses in the ocean, claiming it was fine because a fish was probably wearing them now.
Today, at age 73, I love being a living model for my own adult children – who are now in their thirties and forties – of what a grandma can truly be. I want to pass down that exact same joy and defiance.
It warms my heart to have such a tight relationship with my older grandkids. Whenever they achieve a fantastic result in running, rowing, fencing, gymnastics, or lifting, I am honored to be at the top of the text list of people they want to tell. And for my youngest grandkids, who are still just two to five years old? This grandma fully plans on being right there to share their proud moments for the next twenty or more years.
Like Pearl, reaching 92 joyful, resilient, and strong isn’t just a hopeful dream – it’s a milestone I fully intend to achieve.
Attitude is a whole lot of it.
x
Polli
