Muscular strength is the ability to exert a force on an object or against some type of resistance. You express strength when hitting a baseball or when standing up from a chair.  Pressing a barbell overhead and carrying your groceries requires strength. Optimizing strength across your lifespan will have profound effects on your athletic performance, quality of life, health, and longevity.

How Strength Impacts Sports Performance

Athletes exert large forces against gravity (i.e., sprinting or gymnastics), against an opponent (e.g., football) or when manipulating an object (e.g., throwing a baseball).  Strength is a limiting factor in many of these athletic endeavors. "Power" refers to how fast force is produced.  Stronger athletes produce more force and do so in much less time. Power is associated with several important sports variables like speed, jumping, and throwing velocity. Improving muscular strength through resistance training is a surefire way to improve power and your sports performance.

Your ability to run, jump and change direction is crucial for success in sports. Enhancing strength improves these characteristics that transfer to sport-specific skills. Stronger athletes jump higher and further than weaker athletes. Strength is expressed when an athlete elevates for a rebound in basketball, jumps to spike a ball in volleyball, or dives to catch a ground ball. Athletes, who produce large forces on the ground, are able to jump higher and further than weaker athletes. This results in a true competitive advantage in many sports.

Stronger athletes are also able to accelerate running over short distances. Elite athletes produce greater forces, with short ground contact times, and with greater stride lengths. Evidence strongly suggests a correlation between maximal strength and running speed¹.  Athletes who produce greater amounts of force over a shorter period of time are able to change direction at greater velocities. This is important in basketball or football when attempting to elude defenders.

Becoming stronger is a no-brainer for any athlete looking to jump higher, run faster, or rapidly change direction during their sport. Lateral lunge variations are excellent to improve strength in the frontal plane where many athletic injuries occur.

How Strength Impacts Your Quality of Life in Children

There has been a steady decline in fitness and strength in children across the world. Research shows greater muscular fitness in school-aged youth (4-19 years) is associated with improved body composition (e.g., decreased body fat), and improved risk factor profiles for heart disease and diabetes². There is also strong evidence between muscle strength and bone health and self-esteem in children². Therefore, youth physical activity programs promoting strength have many benefits related to overall health and quality of life in children.

How Strength Affects Quality of Life in Older Adults

Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle size and strength in older adults. Loss of muscle mass begins at approximately age 25 and progresses to a loss of 30% or more by the age of 80. Loss of muscle occurs primarily in type II muscle fibers which are highly responsible for muscle strength and power. Therefore, the rate and magnitude of strength loss usually exceed that of muscle mass by 2-5 times.

Age-related loss of muscle strength and bone mass (osteopenia) is associated with impaired functional mobility, compromised balance, and increased risk of arthritis, joint replacement surgeries, falls, and fractures. All of these factors substantially diminish your quality of life. Nearly 20% of women and 10 % of men over the age of 65 cannot lift a 10-pound weight or kneel down on the floor. The age-related loss of strength is also associated with an inability to live independently and premature death³.

Maintaining muscle strength is a key strategy that leads to healthy aging. Sedentary behavior and physical inactivity are key drivers of sarcopenia and can accelerate your loss of muscle mass and strength. Maintenance of physical activity and engagement in a regular strength training program will diminish or even prevent these age-related changes. Pulling exercises or row variations are great for strengthening your upper body and core musculature.

The Importance of Strength for Optimal Health & Longevity

Aerobic fitness is associated with decreased risk for chronic disease and premature death. The health benefits of exercise programs that target muscular strength are less known to the general public. A 2017 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology showed resistance training reduced the risk of all-cause and cancer-related death to a greater degree than aerobic exercise⁴. There is now a growing body of evidence suggesting poor muscular strength is associated with death from all causes in both healthy and diseased populations.

Another review in the European Journal of Internal Medicine reported a reduced risk for all-cause mortality with increased levels of muscular strength⁵. This association persists even after controlling for age, body fat, smoking, alcohol intake, medications, other health conditions, physical activity, and levels of cardiorespiratory fitness. Handgrip strength has been associated with survival and long-term outcomes in patients with cancer. Muscular strength has also been shown to be associated with long-term outcomes in patients with heart disease.

The health and mortality benefits of muscular strength are related to multiple physiological mechanisms. This includes improved blood pressure, blood lipids, and body composition. Reduced systemic inflammation and reduction in insulin resistance have also been linked to improved muscular strength and mortality.

Based on the available evidence showing a strong association between muscular strength and mortality, adults should perform muscle-strengthening exercises at least 2 days per week in order to reduce mortality risk. For most, basic lower body exercises such as squats and hip hinges are great places to start with a strengthening program.

What You Must Do to Get Stronger

We continuously perform activities during sports and in our daily routine that require the expression of muscular strength. To a certain extent, muscular strength is inherited. However, your strength will never be optimized and will ultimately decline with age unless you do strength training exercises.

Optimizing or preserving muscular strength is strongly associated with improved sports performance, improved quality of life, improved physical function, reduced risk for chronic disease, and reduced risk for all-cause death. This should be sufficient evidence for all individuals, regardless of age or health status, to engage in some form of resistance training today.

See your physical therapist and learn the best way to get started with strength training.

References

1.  Suchomel TJ, Nimphius S, Stone MH. The importance of muscular strength in athletic performance. Sports Med. 2016;46(10):1419-1449. doi:10.1007/s40279-016-0486-0.
2. Smith JJ, Eather N, Morgan PJ, Plotnikoff RC, Faigenbaum AD, Lubans DR. The health benefits of muscular fitness for children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2014;44:1209-1223. doi:10.1007/s40279-014-0196-4.
3. McLeod M, Breen L, Hamilton DL, Philp A. Live strong and prosper: The importance of skeletal muscle strength for healthy aging. Biogerontology. 2016;17(3):497-510. doi:10.1007/s10522-015-9631-7.
4. Stamatakis E, Lee I, Bennie J, et al. Does strength promoting exercise confer unique health benefits? A pooled analysis of eleven population cohorts with all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality endpoints. Eur J Intern Med. 2017; Ahead of P:1-37. doi:10.1093/aje/kwx345/4582884.
5. Volaklis KA, Halle M, Meisinger C. Muscular strength as a strong predictor of mortality: A narrative review. Eur J Intern Med. 2017;26(5):303-310. doi:10.1016/j.ejim.2015.04.013.