After decades of working with older adults, the connection between strength and aging has become deeply personal to me.
My greatest fear with aging isn’t wrinkles. It isn’t gray hair. It isn’t gaining a little weight. My greatest fear is getting weak.
Physically weak. Core weak. Unable-to-do-what-I-love weak.
I NEVER want to be weak.
Not because I need to prove how much I can lift or because I’m trying to hold onto some younger version of myself. It’s because after more than 26 years of working with older adults as an occupational therapist, I know what strength can mean later in life.
It can mean getting out of a chair without someone pulling you up, walking across the yard without being afraid of falling, and carrying your own groceries. Or even getting dressed, climbing the stairs, stepping into the shower, and getting down on the floor with your grandchild (and being able to get back up again).
Strength isn’t just about muscles. Strength is independence.
And the older I get, the more I understand just how valuable that is.
Growing Up Strong
Growing up, I was the “husky” one.
I was the middle child of three girls and a twin, although my twin and I were nothing alike in appearance or personality. My older sister and I look like twins today, while my actual twin and I could probably pass for friends.
And like so many young women, I struggled during those impressionable middle school and high school years when it feels like beauty matters more than almost anything else.
I compared. I noticed the differences between my body and my sisters’ bodies. And, of course, I didn’t appreciate then what I can see so clearly now.
One of my favorite sayings as I’ve gotten older has become: “I wish I had realized how good I looked back then… because now I know I looked just fine!”
My mother used to tell me something else that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. “Shelley, if you were as thin as your sisters, you wouldn’t be the powerhouse you are in sports. Your strength is your gift.”
My strength is my gift. It’s funny how certain things our mothers tell us stay tucked away somewhere until life gives us enough experience to finally understand what they meant.
When I was younger, I was thinking about how my body looked. Today, I think much more about what my body allows me to do. And Mom was right.
Strength really was a gift and it still is.
Strength Became Part of My Identity
As I got older, maintaining strength became part of who I was. Rafael and I completed P90X more than once. We did intense boot camps. Rafael ran three marathons. I competed in sprint triathlons and even placed third overall one season.
There have been seasons when I exercised more and seasons when life got busy and I exercised less. That’s real life.
Work gets demanding. Families need us. Schedules change. Motivation comes and goes. Sometimes we are incredibly disciplined, and sometimes simply getting through the week feels like an accomplishment. But even through those different seasons, I never stopped believing that maintaining strength mattered.
My career made it impossible for me not to. For decades, I’ve worked with people whose ability to do ordinary things changed because their strength, balance, endurance, mobility, or confidence changed.
And when you spend enough time helping someone relearn how to get out of a chair, safely step into a shower, walk to the bathroom, or move through their own home, you stop thinking about strength as something that only belongs in a gym.
You begin to understand it for what it really is.
Freedom.
Aging Is Not the Enemy
Recently, I watched 80-year-old Natalie Grabow complete the Ironman World Championship. Eighty years old. And what makes her story even more remarkable is that she didn’t begin competing in triathlons until later in life.
Now, am I suggesting every 80-year-old should go sign up for an Ironman? Absolutely not. I’m not even suggesting every 40-year-old should do that.
But stories like hers challenge something I think we accept far too easily: the idea that a person’s age automatically tells us what they are capable of.
It doesn’t. Our bodies change as we age. Health conditions happen. Injuries happen. Medications, neurological conditions, chronic illness, pain, disability, and countless other factors can affect what someone is able to do.
There are things we cannot control. There are things we cannot control. Still, age alone does not tell the whole story. And I wish we would stop treating a birth date like a diagnosis.
What We Get Wrong About Strength and Aging
There is one phrase I absolutely hate hearing: “It’s just because you’re getting old.”
Sometimes I heard it from patients during my occupational therapy career.
“I’m too old for that.”
“I can’t do that anymore.”
“What do you expect? I’m old.”
And sometimes the people around them had started believing it too. That’s the part that concerns me. Because once we decide decline is inevitable simply because someone is older, we can stop asking important questions.
Has something changed? Why has it changed? Is there something contributing to this? Is there an opportunity to improve it? Does this person need additional support? Would therapy help?
Are we assuming they can’t do something instead of finding out what they actually can do?
When we talk about strength and aging, we have to remember that normal aging involves change. But we shouldn’t automatically dismiss every change in strength, balance, endurance, memory, or function as “just getting old.”
Sometimes a change deserves a closer look. And sometimes, with the right support, people are capable of far more than they—or the people around them—realize.
So What Can We Actually Do About It?
This is where I want people to think differently about strength and aging—and about the role movement and exercise can play along the way.
You don’t have to be training for an Ironman or trying to become a bodybuilder. You don’t have to exercise because you’re trying to make your body look twenty years younger.
Think about what you want your body to continue allowing you to do.
Do you want to keep traveling?
Working in your garden?
Walking your dog?
Going up and down the stairs?
Playing with your grandchildren?
Carrying your own groceries?
Getting yourself off the floor?
Living independently in your own home?
Then those are the things worth training for.
Train for Independence, Not Vanity
When I think about strength as an occupational therapist, I don’t just think about how much weight someone can lift. I think about what that strength allows them to do when they walk out of the gym—or if they never step inside one at all.
Getting out of a chair requires strength. So does climbing the stairs, carrying laundry, getting off the toilet, stepping into a bathtub, bringing groceries into the house, or getting yourself back up after you’ve been sitting on the floor.
Your legs and hips help you stand, walk, climb, and recover when your balance shifts. A strong core helps stabilize you while you reach, bend, turn, and carry. Upper-body strength supports everyday movements like pushing, pulling, reaching, and carrying.
But real life doesn’t ask those muscles to work one at a time. It asks your entire body to work together.
That’s why I care so much about functional strength—strength that actually shows up when life asks for it. And the goal is going to look different for everyone.
For one person, it might be completing a triathlon. For another, it may be standing from a chair more safely. Someone else may want to walk to the mailbox, work in the garden again, transfer with less assistance, or feel confident enough to go out with friends.
There is no trophy for carrying your own laundry basket upstairs or getting yourself safely out of the shower. But when those are the things allowing you to continue living life on your own terms, they matter a whole lot more than a trophy.
You aren’t training for vanity. You’re training for your life.
Strength Is Only Part of the Picture
Strength matters tremendously, but it isn’t the only thing that helps us continue moving safely and confidently. That’s an important part of the conversation about strength and aging that can easily get overlooked.
Balance, coordination, vision, sensation, reaction time, endurance, medications, fatigue, and even our environment can affect how we function. That’s why I pay attention when someone starts moving differently.
Maybe they’re suddenly holding onto furniture, avoiding stairs they used to climb every day, stumbling more frequently, or saying no to activities because they’re afraid they’ll fall.
Those changes tell us something, and “they’re just getting older” isn’t enough of an explanation for me. I want to know what changed.
Fall prevention works the same way. Removing loose rugs, improving lighting, installing grab bars, and clearing walkways can make an environment safer. But I also want to look at the person moving through it.
Has their strength or vision changed? Are they dizzy? Are they weaker after an illness or hospitalization? Are they moving less because they’re afraid of falling?
Sometimes fear itself becomes part of the problem. Someone becomes afraid of falling, so they move less. Less movement can contribute to losing strength, endurance, and confidence, making movement even harder. That’s a cycle I don’t want people to ignore.
The answer isn’t the same for everyone, and neither is the starting point. Every body is different, and so are our health histories and abilities.
But we can pay attention, notice changes, and ask questions instead of automatically blaming age.
When something doesn’t seem right, we can involve the appropriate healthcare or rehabilitation professional and find out what may be possible.
Strength Is Independence
I still don’t want to get weak. Maybe that fear will always be part of me.
But the older I get, the more my perspective on strength and aging changes. I realize this isn’t really about being “strong” in the way I thought about strength when I was younger.
I’m not trying to outrun aging. I can’t control everything my body will experience, and neither can you.
What I can do is continue giving my body opportunities to move, work, adapt, and stay capable.
I can pay attention when something changes instead of automatically accepting it. I can keep challenging the assumption that getting older means expecting less and less from ourselves. And I can keep remembering what my mom tried to teach me all those years ago: Strength is a gift.
Today, I would add something to that.
Strength is independence. Strength is dignity.
Strength is one of the foundations of aging well.
And it’s worth protecting.
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Aging well isn’t about pretending we’re not getting older. It’s about paying attention to what’s changing, understanding what we can do about it, and making choices today that help us stay as strong, capable, and independent as possible.
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Shelley
