Resistance for health

I am impressed with physical therapists.  Often, I get care or attention from a physician for short time and then find I need to spend many sessions with a physical therapist.  Last semester, Lynn and I took a class on exercise with a physical therapist.  

He stated more than once that he felt strength training was more important for older people than aerobics.  He works with many "seniors" and I think he sees people every day that who lack the strength to work through their day successfully.  Many of them could develop the needed strength for a smoother, easier life will some effort.  From the first day, Gus had us use resistance bands.  Whether flat bands or loops or tubes, they are great.  I use one in my workout in the weight room.  They are inexpensive, light in weight, and quiet.  One of the nicest things about them is that they are somewhat dynamic in that they resist in proportion to the amount they are stretched.  So, when you are pulling against one, it resists more as you pull it to the extreme.  Also, they are pulling all the time, including when you relax the pull.  

I enjoy the use of actual weights and I feel that it is fairly easy to get a good workout with an real weight.  The bands don't come in very great strengths so thighs, hamstrings and backs can be worked fully more quickly with the right weight amounts.  But the bands or tubes are much easier to carry in a suitcase or the trunk while traveling.  

I have read about body work that emphasizes the use of the body only, such as pull-ups or push-ups.  It is quite clear that the young people in the weight room are doing more such exercises and less with simple dead weights, although now that I think about it, I use the weight room where young women and older people go and not the one with the fifty pound weight plates that are are a struggle to move and load onto a weight bar.  So, bodybuilders and heavy-duty athletes may well be using less of the body as its own gym that what I see.  The young people are indicators of the latest thinking by coaches and teachers.