Because every day you DON'T train your strength (well, real strength), this is what happens...

1. Your muscles give way to fat.
2. Your nerve fibres - which activate the muscles and cause them to contract and develop power - are disrupted.

Of course, this is NOT a scare tactic.
But if you're currently in a place where strength training does NOT seem like an option... I actually have a solution for you.
Hang in there a little longer though, because as one of my good old teachers always said:

"All progress starts by telling the truth".

We start losing muscle mass in our 30s.
From our 50s onwards, it's even faster.
And as we lose muscle, our blood sugar regulation gets worse and inflammation levels in the body get higher. The process is called "inflammaging".

The latest research in the field of sustainable aging points to one of the main causes of age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and function (which then drives inflammation and accelerated ageing):

It's because......
the brain-muscle connection disappears - in a very physical sense.
The switch through which nerve fibres supply individual muscles with "power" breaks down. For a certain amount of time afterwards, the muscles can still contract and develop power, like a speaker that has been charged.

But eventually, without a power supply, the muscles run out of power and the nerve fibres and the nerve cells that send signals through them disintegrate. This process is called muscle denervation - the muscle no longer receives power from the nervous system and is eventually lost.

While it was previously thought that this is "just the way it is with age", it has now been discovered that inactivity plays a VERY active role in denervation - where the power goes out and the muscle switches off.

Inactivity is not just a passive innocent bystander to this muscle loss process - it is a direct accelerator!

Physical activity (of a very special kind) is the single most important thing that can maintain that brain-muscle connection.
When you load your muscles with heavy strength training, you're keeping the nerves and muscles talking to each other.

And it's NEVER too late to get started, according to new research from the University of Copenhagen*.

Don't let your eyes glaze over when you read "heavy strength training".
Because yes, it should be heavy - but still manageable.
Strength training is about overcoming resistance (hence "resistance training") - not collapsing under it...

But it MUST be heavy enough - especially for women.
Physical activity prevents muscle loss in men, regardless of intensity.
Unfortunately, just being active is NOT enough for women.
We need to lift heavy things and eat more food - completely opposite to the traditional 'feminine' approach to health with lots of pumping repetitions with light weights for "long lean muscles", circuit training and calorie monitoring.

Moderate activity does NOT sufficiently stimulate our muscles and bones - and high levels of physical activity combined with low energy intake accelerate muscle loss (and osteoporosis!).

Heavy strength training and high metabolism, with a sufficiently high energy intake (= lots of good food that you can enjoy without having to watch your weight), on the other hand, is our vital health insurance as women.

BEFORE you can start training at high enough loads and build muscle, you need to take care of the foundation from which you will develop strength.
And most of us have a lot of "brakes" on our muscles that protect us from developing a force that we are not ready to handle if we have blind spots in terms of body awareness (sensing), mobility, stability and muscle contact.

The first step is to recalibrate your inner perception (interoception).
This is the most overlooked area to access greater strength and training effect.

Inner perception is the key to many things, but in relation to the above - removing the "brakes" or "throwing off the shackles" if you will, so you can start training or break through a plateau - inner perception stands for one important thing: Making sure that a small effort doesn't feel (and subsequently cost energy) like a big effort.

You (re)train your interoception by working on two things that are the fastest way to recalibrate your brain-body connection:

1. Your insides - tongue, palate, diaphragm, abdominal cavity, pelvic floor, vagus nerve.
2. A special type of nerve fibre - C fibres - found in high concentration in skin, muscle and connective tissue.