“The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
The young, ambitious start. Where you form a strong base for yourself. Then life turns up the heat and strength stops being something you forge and becomes something you spend. You're building, making deals happen, growing a family, and somewhere in the middle of all of it you assume your body will just keep pace. It does, until one day, it doesn't. Not all at once, but just enough to notice.
Failure though, is just the floor.
Come with me if you want to live.
THE BIG IDEA
Strength, your ability to handle and create force, determines how your body performs today and what it will be capable of years from now.
You feel it in how you move, how you recover, and how much effort the basic things actually take. Carrying a child or grandchild, getting up off the ground, racing through the airport with a briefcase and a rolling bag to make the connection. Strength lowers the cost of all of it today and builds capacity you'll draw on when things get harder.
Muscle drives more than movement. It clears sugar from your bloodstream, supports joints, reinforces bone, and provides a buffer during injury, illness, or stress. Those who maintain it stay more productive, more capable and more themselves — today and well into the years ahead.
Don't borrow from your future self. Understand where you are, what you can do to improve, and invest in that future.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Your body responds to demand. Over time it remembers how you've treated it. When you use muscle, two things improve. The muscle itself grows, and your nervous system gets better at using it. Strength is the combination of both. Mass matters, but coordination and recruitment matter just as much. Strength is what you use in real life. Muscle size gives you potential. Strength turns that potential into output.
Over time, both begin to decline. Muscle mass naturally decreases with age, but overall strength declines faster. The reason sits with the nervous system. Your ability to recruit muscle fibers, generate force quickly, and coordinate movement starts to degrade before the muscle itself is gone. The wiring loses efficiency before the hardware gives out.
Once strength starts to decline, the effects spread. Movement gets harder, simple tasks take longer. Joint stability weakens and injury becomes more likely. Recovery extends, pulling you out of the things you actually want to do. The system becomes less adaptable to stress.
The picture is clear on the outside, but the more consequential changes are happening internally.
Muscle is a primary site for glucose disposal. When it contracts, it pulls glucose out of circulation and uses it for energy. The process depends on both the amount of muscle you have and how effectively you can activate it. Reduced muscle and strength limit the body's ability to regulate its own energy system. Blood sugar stays elevated longer, the body compensates with higher insulin output, and over time that creates strain across the entire metabolic system. See our February newsletter for a deep dive on blood sugar.
Left alone, the decline reinforces itself. Lower strength leads to less use, and less use accelerates the loss of strength, muscle and system regulation.
You've felt that change over your life, even if you haven't named it. Stairs that require more effort. A threshold you used to clear without thinking now needs concentration. A quad tweak that lingers longer than it used to. The jar that now requires a device. The gap between what you want to do and what your body can handle starts to widen.
Strength training, even if limited, interrupts that cycle. It does two things at once: building muscle and restoring the nervous system's ability to use it. The combination improves force production, glucose handling, and overall resilience across the entire system.
A LOOK AT THE DATA
Source basis: Garcia-Hermoso A et al., Br J Sports Med. 2018;52:1060-1066; Ruiz JR et al., BMJ 2008;337:a439. Original illustrative recreation.
The data is consistent across decades of research. A large meta-analysis of 16 studies published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that higher strength correlates with 10 to 17 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes — holding even after adjusting for age, smoking and body composition.
The Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study followed men over several decades and found that those in the highest strength categories had significantly lower risk of death, independent of cardiorespiratory fitness. Strength and fitness overlap, but each contributes independently.
Two short sessions a week produce measurable improvements in insulin sensitivity and glucose control within months. In those sessions put your body under load. Movements that produce force and control it - squats, push-ups, carrying something heavy and with intent. It doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be consisten
Your Small Win This Month
Two strength sessions a week. Twenty minutes is enough. The last few reps of each set should feel like a challenge, enough that you know you did something. Cover these five movements:
Your Small Win This Month
Two strength sessions a week. Twenty minutes is enough. The last few reps of each set should feel like a challenge, enough that you know you did something. Cover these five movements:
Squats
Sit to a chair and stand back up under control. Drive through your whole foot and stand tall at the top..
Pull
Row something toward your hip — a band, cable, or dumbbell. Squeeze at the top before you release.
Hinge
Push your hips back with a flat back, then drive your hips forward to stand. Think closing a car door with your hips.
Carry
Hold something heavy in each hand — a grocery bag, backpack, or dumbbell — and walk for 30 to 60 seconds. Stand tall, move with purpose.
Push
Hands on a wall, counter, or floor. Lower your chest with control and push the ground away.
Quick Sets
Intensity - Muscle responds to effort, not equipment. Bodyweight counts. Even one simple session a week carries more weight than a plan that never sticks.
Food and Strength - Muscle needs input on both sides—stimulus and fuel. Protein gives your body what it needs to repair and build. Around 20–40 grams per meal works well for most people.
Strength and Sleep - Strength training carries into the night, increasing the amount of deep sleep you get. Training earlier in the day tends to line up best. You create demand during the day, and your body uses sleep to catch up.
A Member Story: Grant Zarzour
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