Strength Training for Women Over 60: Start With Two Tests

Strength is how much you can lift. Power is how fast you can push it. With age, power fades earlier and faster than strength. So the first thing to slip is often getting up from a low couch or out of the car, long before carrying the groceries.

Standing up from a chair takes power, and it's easy to count. Build that power back, and everyday things get easier. Rae, 63, wrote in her Solin review: "I’m 63 years old and can keep up with my very active grandchildren !" Kunyi, a few weeks from 66, put it more simply: "Shoveling heavy wet snow is not a problem." Results vary.

12 or more if you're 60 to 64, and a little fewer as you get older. Do the test first, from the CDC's chair stand sheet:

1. Use a sturdy chair with a straight back and no arms, with a seat about 17 inches high. Push it against a wall so it can't slide.
2. Sit in the middle of the seat with your feet flat on the floor.
3. Cross your arms at the wrists and hold them against your chest.
4. Start a 30-second timer. Stand all the way up, then sit all the way back down. Keep going until time's up.
5. Count every full stand. If you're more than halfway up when time ends, count that one too.

If you need your arms to get up, the CDC sheet says to stop and score it 0.

Fewer stands than the mark for your age is below average, and the CDC counts that as a sign of fall risk. If yours is under the mark, tell your doctor, and start your strength work by standing up and sitting down from that same chair. A low score, even a 0, isn't a verdict. It's your reason to start.

Good enough to stand heel to toe for 10 seconds. That's the CDC's line: if you can't, your risk of falling is higher.

The CDC's 4-stage balance test is four stances, 10 seconds each. Stand next to a kitchen counter so you can grab it if you wobble. You can hold your arms out or sway, but don't move your feet. If you can't hold a stance for 10 seconds, stop there.

1. Feet side by side.
2. One foot half a step forward, so the big toe of your back foot touches the arch of your front foot.
3. Heel to toe: one foot right in front of the other, the heel touching the toe.
4. Stand on one foot.

Write down the last stance you held for the full 10 seconds. Our over-50 guide has three balance moves to finish each workout.

Start with pairs of 2, 3 and 5 pounds. That's the set the CDC and Tufts strength program for older adults has women buy. Spend your first week learning the moves. After that, pick your weight with a simple test: use one you can lift at least 10 times with moderate effort. The last couple of reps feel like work, and your form holds. Our dumbbell guide uses a similar 10-rep test.

• Can't get to 8? Go lighter.
• Can you do more than 10 or 12? Go heavier.
• Check your weights after 2 weeks.
• Sick, hurt or very sore? Stay where you are.

Joanne, 64, started from zero: "I’m 64 and in week 5 of my first challenge. I’ve never lifted weights before".

You'll often read that slower is better. One review found otherwise. Once a move feels steady, stand up at a brisk pace, then take 2 or 3 seconds to sit back down.

A 2022 review of 20 trials with 566 older adults, about two thirds of them women, compared lifting fast and lowering slowly with slow lifting. The fast way helped everyday function a little more, and strength and muscle gains were the same. No trial reported a serious side effect, though most didn't track side effects well.

Brisk means smooth and quick, not jumping or jerking. Use it when you push against the floor or the counter: standing up from the chair, a step-up, a counter push-up. Never use it to bend forward or twist your back with a weight. If your bones are thin, keep to the slow, controlled swaps in our over-50 guide.

Count again after six weeks of lifting, the same way: the same chair, the same time of day, the same counter. In a 12-week trial of 168 women averaging about 75, the ones who did chair-based band workouts twice a week went from 12.2 to 14.2 chair stands. The women who didn't train went from 11.7 to 12.5, which the authors think came from moving more day to day.

So don't wait for a big jump. A stand or two at six weeks is a good result. Count a third time at 12 weeks. Your dumbbells are the other scoreboard: when the weight you started with feels easy for 12 reps, you've gotten stronger.

Women over 60 who reviewed coach Cheryl Coulombe's challenges on Solin say the same. In 89 reviews from women who say they're 60 to 79, written from January 2025 to October 2026, about half name getting stronger. Faye, 70: "At 70, I never thought I would see changes in my body that I have seen in the past 6 months." Results vary.