Chasing after your dog, catching yourself before you fall, jumping over a big puddle. These activities all have something in common, and it’s not just that they’re the makings of a very bad day. They rely on power: the ability to generate force quickly. It’s an often overlooked part of the fitness menu that experts think deserves more attention.

Mobility, cardio and strength all help us stay active and healthy as we get older. Strength training in particular has boomed in recent years, as the importance of building muscle mass to keep us strong, protect our bones and help us stay mobile as we age becomes more widely recognised. But when it comes to activities such as pushing yourself up from a chair or moving your arms quickly to break a fall, the size of your muscles will only get you so far. You also need power.

Imagine throwing a shot put, says Oly Perkin, a researcher at the University of Bath specialising in exercise to improve health at all stages of life. “You might have the strength to move the shot put from a start position to the top position. That’s largely down to your muscle mass. But to do that super quickly, to produce the force needed to propel the shot into the air, a different kind of strength is required.”

That explosive force depends on how quickly the nervous system can activate those muscles – the speed and efficiency of the brain-muscle connection.

For younger, active people, improving power can help prevent injuries. It can also help people who lift weights break through a training plateau. Where power training may matter most, though, is in reducing some of the effects of ageing.

“As you get older your muscles shrink and that is inescapable, irrespective of how active you are,” Perkin says. “If you make sure that the neural element is maintained alongside the muscle, your ability to maintain physical function across your life is much better. Even if you inevitably lose muscle mass, there’s good evidence that you can make better use of the muscle you have.”

The challenge is that power tends to decline faster than strength. After the age of 40 people typically lose about 1-2% of muscle mass each year. Alarmingly, muscle power can decline earlier and much more rapidly. The encouraging news is that power can be trained.

You build muscle by moving heavy weights a few times a week and increasing the load as it becomes manageable. The tension that the exercise places on the muscle fibres triggers a remodelling process that leaves the muscles better able to handle the stress next time.

Power is built differently. Instead of lifting heavy weights you move lighter weights, or your own body weight, but as quickly as possible. This could mean plyometric exercises such as box jumps. It could also include weighted movements such as throwing and catching a medicine ball, weighted jumps, snatches (where you grab a dumbbell from the ground and pull it towards the ceiling) and kettle bell swings. Weight-wise, you want something at about a six-out-of-10 difficulty level.

For older or less mobile people, power training can start with very simple movements. Try wall push-offs: lean diagonally with your hands against a wall, arms bent, and push yourself away at speed.

Perkin adds that, although everyone can benefit from training power, it may be especially valuable for older adults who have already experienced a significant decline in muscle mass. When muscle loss reaches the point of immobility, rebuilding it becomes very difficult. But improving the nervous system’s ability to activate the muscle that remains is still possible. “Growing muscle when you’re old is hard. There are physiological limits,” he says. “But for most older adults the capacity to improve neural function is still quite good. Within three or four weeks you can start to see improvements in key markers.”

If you’re thinking of stepping into your power, Perkin, alongside Alex Dinsdale, senior lecturer in sport and exercise biomechanics at Leeds Beckett University, and Leigh Breen, a leading expert in the field of skeletal muscle physiology and metabolism from the University of Leicester, share their tips.

Find your benchmark

A good way to test whether you could benefit from power training is if you can hold a squat but can’t squat jump more than a couple of inches off the ground, says Perkin. But jumps are also useful for measuring progress for those who have already built some power. Dinsdale says that when he works with athletes they regularly test power by incorporating jumps into sessions and measuring the heights or distances achieved. This may include static jumps on to boxes or broad jumps where you jump forward from a standing start.

For older or less active adults, the sit-to-stand test is useful. Sit in a chair with no armrests, cross your arms over your chest with your hands on your shoulders and keep your feet flat on the floor. How many times can you move from sitting to standing in 30 seconds? Over-65s should aim for at least 11 repetitions.

Perkin recommends using the same exercise to improve your power by doing three sets of 12 to 15 sit-to-stands while wearing a weighted vest.

Train with a goal in mind

“Obviously the main goal should be good general health and longevity,” says Breen. “But beyond that, everybody has something specific they want to achieve.” It’s useful to keep that end goal in mind as a motivator, as you’re less likely to see visible results than you are with strength training. It doesn’t have to involve training for a marathon or doing a Hyrox competition. It could simply mean restoring a functional ability that has been lost, such as being able to throw the bin bags into the outside bin or chasing the grandchildren around. “I think it’s always important to keep the purpose in mind when we undertake a training regime,” says Breen.

Get the timing right

All our experts say power training should come after you’ve warmed up, but early in your workout. It’s harder to develop neuromuscular speed when your muscles are fatigued; and it’s easier to injure yourself doing rapid movements when you’re exhausted.

Keep sessions short, adds Dinsdale. The focus is on how quickly you can move something, which means working at your maximum possible speed. You can only sustain that for short bursts. If you’re using weights, choose a light or moderate load and move it five or six times. Do three sets of three exercises, resting between them. You’ll want two to five minutes between sets so your systems can recover fully.

You don’t need a separate session

Doing a couple of power exercises a few times a week is more effective than doing many of them once a week. A simple approach is to add a 10-minute power block to the beginning of any regular strength workout. That could be three rounds of 10 kettlebell swings (which help with the posterior power chain), medicine ball throws and slams (to improve upper body speed) and weighted squat jumps (lower body).

Runs can also be tweaked to include power work. “You could do short periods of sprinting, maybe five or 10 strides as quickly as you can,” says Perkin. “Or stop briefly and do a few vertical jumps.”For those who aren’t confident with weights or jumping, Breen recommends doing medicine ball throws while seated (they’re still effective).

Take it steady

On first trying power training, it’s tempting to reach for heavier weights than necessary, says Dinsdale. Instead start lighter. “Use about 50 to 60% of whatever your maximum is for that movement [your maximum is the weight you can only lift once], and then build up,” he says. He adds that there’s very little benefit to going very heavy with these kinds of exercises if your focus is building mind-muscle connection.

Because you’re moving quickly, safety matters. As well as lighter weights, it’s important to focus on maintaining good form. If you’re unsure, Dinsdale recommends working with a trainer or taking gym classes while you build confidence.

Don’t be fooled by the name of workouts

Confusingly, powerlifting – lifting heavy weights without a time limit – doesn’t actually train power. Olympic weightlifting – with moves like the clean-and-jerk, where a barbell must be moved quickly off the floor and then into the air – does. For most people, power walking doesn’t train power either.

Use power to break through a plateau

Power training can also help people who feel stuck in their strength training. “When you lift weights you can reach a plateau where it becomes difficult to increase muscle size further,” says Perkin.

Adding lighter power work for a few weeks can sometimes unlock further gains. It forces your body to adapt by increasing the efficiency of the neuromuscular system. This enhances your ability to move heavy weights when you go back to them. “Then you have the opportunity to grow more muscle again. There’s a crossover effect,” adds Perkin.

Try a sport

If gyms feel intimidating and you’re right at the start of a power journey, playing sport can be another way to develop a beginner level of power. Activities such as tennis, padel, football or netball involve short bursts of acceleration that engage the mind-muscle connection, with the added social benefits. Contact sports, such as rugby and boxing, require explosive power too. The most important thing is finding a varied routine you enjoy.

Even a few days away from Earth can significantly alter the human body. Without the constant pull of gravity on the skeleton, muscle and bone can quickly atrophy. To combat this immediate physical decline, the four astronauts aboard Orion on the Artemis II mission are using a specially designed machine known as the flywheel.

In a video blog posted before the crew launched, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen compares the flywheel to a rowing machine. “Like a cardiovascular workout where you row at a lower resistance and a fast pace,” Hansen explains as he demonstrates the flywheel’s functionality. Astronauts strap their feet onto a small platform and pull on a handle connected to a cable. Pulling spins a flywheel. It works like a yo-yo, according to NASA — astronauts get as much resistance as they put into it.

The Artemis II crew exercises on Orion using a flywheel, a simple cable-based device for aerobic and resistance workouts.
hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

The flywheel is small, not unlike an extra large shoebox. Working in Orion’s tight quarters — only 316 cubic feet , about the size of a smallish bedroom — engineers had to design this device to perform with utmost efficiency, so that it can both provide a cardiovascular workout and resistance exercises up to 400 pounds. Astronauts can use it to do weightlifting moves like squats, deadlifts and curls.

Before the astronauts, there were the pillownauts 

The flywheel has been years in the making. Jessica Scott, an exercise physiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, worked on early prototypes for NASA, anticipating that astronauts would be vulnerable to rapid muscle atrophy without physical exertion.

Scott compares ten days in space to ten days in bed. Atrophying for that amount of time, says Scott, “You would feel very weak and your muscles start to lose size very quickly.” The heart, she stresses, is especially vulnerable with this decline in strength.

When recruiting people to study these early flywheel prototypes, says Scott, researchers looked for 30 subjects willing to lie in bed for 70 days. She and her colleagues weren’t sure they would be easy to recruit.

Turns out, people were eager to spend hours a day reclining in the name of science.

“We had over 10,000 people apply for 30 positions,” says Scott.

They called themselves the “pillownauts.”

Researchers divided these participants into different groups. Some stayed in bed all day. Some of them broke their bed rest in order to work out on a more traditional suite of exercise equipment, and some of them used the flywheel. The goal was not to improve fitness, but to prevent declines.

The flywheel, says Scott, delivered the results researchers were hoping.

“What was really exciting was that the small device could prevent the declines, the same amount that a full gym could do,” she says.

Other missions — like those aboard the International Space Station — have full suites of exercise equipment. The flywheel has not yet been tested for longer durations, but Scott says she’s hopeful it could also provide fitness for astronauts in longer periods of gravity deprivation.

Not everyone’s an astronaut, but everyone ages

Even for people who are not planning on orbiting the moon — this research has important implications, says Thomas Lang, a radiologist who studies bone and muscle loss and has worked with NASA on exercise science for previous missions.

“You start childhood and then as you grow your bone density and mass reach a peak,” says Lang, “in your late twenties or early thirties.”

Those who are lucky to live to old age, he says, will experience hormonal changes that lead to bone loss over time. For women, that escalates sharply in menopause. “That’s a big whopping decline,” says Lang.

Men’s decline may not be as dramatic, says Lang, but they are also vulnerable, especially as they live into their 70s and 80s.

NASA researcher Jessica Scott is also hopeful this work could have broader applications for the general public. Few of us will travel to space, but many of us can relate to dealing with time and space constraints when it comes to exercise, says Scott.

“One day we could all be having our own flywheel,” she says — something small enough to fit under a desk at work, or in the corner of an office.

After his first 30-minute aerobic session with the device, astronaut Reid Wiseman said he was happy to report that in addition to providing a good workout, he was pleased the flywheel didn’t drive his roommates too crazy. No one had to wear ear plugs to block out the sound.

“ It is a really good piece of gear and we can actually get a nice workout,” says Wiseman. “I look forward to the next time I get to try a resistance workout.”

While you probably know that walking after eating and avoiding sitting for prolonged periods of time can reduce glucose spikes and help manage blood sugar levels, a recent study shows that something much simpler could be just as effective: seated soleus push-ups, a.k.a. seated calf raises.

The research was done on an equal number of men and women in their late 20s to early 30s, and involved them performing continuous soleus push-ups after consuming a glucose drink. Blood glucose and insulin were then measured at various intervals over time. The same measurements were taken on participants after consuming the drink, without the soleus push-ups, and responses were compared.

Doing the exercise led to a 52% reduction in glucose spikes, and a 60% lower insulin response, proving that you may not even need to leave your desk or sofa to improve blood sugar control.

There’s something unique about the exercise that makes it superior to others. ‘There’s a muscle in your calf called the soleus muscle,’ French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé, a.k.a. The Glucose Goddess, explained during an episode of Steven Barlett’s podcast, The Diary of a CEO. ‘This muscle is very good at soaking up glucose from your blood stream, so this is an easy hack you can do after you east something sweet – just do some calf raises at your desk, nobody will notice. In studies they do hours of this, but even just one minute is better than nothing.’

What’s important to reap the rewards is that the exercise is performed after eating (as in the study, where participants did it after consuming a glucose drink), and that reps are continuous as opposed to performed in sets with rest. This is because the sustained activation is what drives the glucose uptake – the continuous muscle contractions ensure glucose levels can’t rebound during rest intervals.

Advertisement

The authors of the study added that the exercise is a practical low-cost strategy – and one that could be particularly useful for people who are sedentary, elderly or have limited mobility.

Unless you’re diabetic, insulin resistant, or have metabolic risk factors such as PCOS, remember that glucose spikes are normal. They’re simply part of the digestion process and healthy bodies are capable of returning to baseline glucose efficiently. You don’t need to strictly avoid spikes, but better management of blood sugar can help energy levels and appetite, even without medical conditions. Speak to a medical professional if you’re unsure.

How to do soleus push-ups

1. Sit upright with your feet flat on the floor, knees bent at about 90 degrees.
2. Lift your heels while keeping the balls of your feet on the ground (like a small calf raise).
3. Lower your heels back down in a slow, controlled motion.
4. Repeat continuously at a steady, gentle pace for an extended period (aim for continuous movement over short sets with rests in between).

How long to do them

While the study involved participants performing the exercise continuously for around four hours, a separate study proved that a reduction in glucose spikes occurred around the 30-minute mark. It’s also worth noting that, anecdotally, Reddit users report a reduction in glucose spikes after just eight minutes, and Inchauspe affirms that ‘even one minute is better than nothing’.

The conclusion

Most of the existing research is based on a small sample size and performed in specific, controlled lab conditions – but the findings are promising proof that the exercise could be superior to other exercises for blunting glucose spikes, and could be an effective method for people who spend a lot of time sitting or those unable to employ other hacks, such as walking after meals. They’re not a magic bullet for everyone; any light activity after meals (like walking) is well-proven to manage blood sugar levels, but if you are unable to walk or perform other exercise, it’s worth a try.

 As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director and a qualified Pilates and yoga instructor, Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism. She secured her first role at Look Magazine, where her obsession with fitness began and she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!. Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red.Now, she oversees all fitness content across womenshealthmag.com.uk and the print magazine, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, where we showcase the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise. She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how.Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.  

Advertisement