Stronger Muscles May Help Women Live Longer

For decades, the conversation around exercise and longevity has mostly revolved around aerobic fitness. Walk more. Run. Ride a bike. Get your heart rate up. Accumulate your weekly minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.

All of that is still important, but strength may deserve a much bigger place in the longevity conversation, especially for women as they get older.

A large 2026 study published in JAMA Network Open followed 5,472 women between the ages of 63 and 99 and examined whether muscular strength was associated with the risk of dying over the following several years. Instead of asking participants how strong they thought they were, researchers objectively measured strength using two very simple tests: handgrip strength and the time required to complete five unassisted chair stands.

After an average follow-up of about 8.4 years, 1,964 women had died. Women who were stronger had a substantially lower risk of death, and that relationship remained even after researchers accounted for physical activity, sedentary time, walking speed, inflammation, existing health conditions, and several other factors related to aging.

The takeaway isn't that squeezing a handgrip device will make you live longer. Grip strength is a marker of overall muscular strength and physical resilience.

And the results suggest that maintaining that strength as we age may matter a lot more than many people realize.

TLDR: Strength May Be an Important Part of Living Longer

This study does not prove that strength training itself prevents death because it was observational. What it does show is a remarkably consistent relationship between greater muscular strength and lower mortality in older women, even after accounting for how physically active and aerobically fit they were.

• The study included 5,472 women aged 63 to 99, with an average age of about 79.
• Researchers measured both handgrip strength and five-repetition chair stand performance.
• Participants were followed for an average of approximately 8.4 years, during which 1,964 women died.
• After extensive statistical adjustment, women in the highest grip-strength category had about a 30% lower mortality risk than women in the weakest category.
• Women with the fastest chair-stand performance had about a 31% lower mortality risk after accounting for physical activity and sedentary behavior.
• The association remained after researchers accounted for walking speed, inflammation, health conditions, body weight, smoking, and other factors.
• Greater strength was associated with lower mortality even among women who were not meeting recommended aerobic activity levels.
• The study supports a bigger idea: healthy aging isn't just about maintaining cardiovascular fitness. Maintaining strength matters too.

What Did the Researchers Actually Study?

The researchers used data from the Objective Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Health in Older Women study, which is part of the larger Women's Health Initiative. The final analysis included 5,472 ambulatory women between 63 and 99 years old, with an average age of 78.7.

This was also a fairly diverse group. Approximately 34% of participants were Black, 17% were Hispanic or Latina, and 50% were White.

One thing that makes this study particularly useful is that the researchers didn't rely entirely on questionnaires asking participants how active they were. The women wore accelerometers for seven consecutive days, allowing researchers to objectively measure moderate to vigorous physical activity and sedentary time.

They also measured walking speed, health conditions, blood pressure, body weight, smoking, physical functioning, general health, and systemic inflammation.

That's important because stronger people also tend to be more active and healthier. If researchers didn't account for those differences, it would be difficult to know whether strength itself was meaningful or whether stronger women simply exercised more.

Even after accounting for many of those factors, the relationship between strength and mortality remained.

The Grip Strength Results Were Pretty Striking

Researchers divided the women into four categories based on dominant-hand grip strength:

Less than 14 kg

14 to 19 kg

19 to 24 kg

Greater than 24 kg

Before statistical adjustment, the differences in mortality between those groups were substantial.

The death rate among women in the weakest grip-strength category was approximately 67.2 deaths per 1,000 person-years.

Among women with the strongest grip strength, it was approximately 23.5 deaths per 1,000 person-years.

Obviously, we can't look at those raw numbers and say strength caused the difference. Women with greater strength may also be younger, healthier, leaner, more active, or have fewer medical problems.

That's why the adjusted analysis matters.

After researchers accounted for age, demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors, health conditions, and other variables, women in the highest grip-strength category had a 33% lower mortality risk than those in the weakest category.

When researchers went even further and simultaneously accounted for objectively measured physical activity and sedentary time, the association weakened slightly but remained significant.

The strongest women still had approximately a 30% lower mortality risk.

That's the number that caught my attention.

Getting Out of a Chair May Tell Us More Than We Think

The second strength assessment was about as technologically advanced as it sounds.

The women had to stand up from a chair five times without assistance, and researchers timed how long it took.

The participants were again separated into categories. Women in the slowest group required more than 16.7 seconds to complete five chair stands, while women in the fastest group completed them in 11.1 seconds or less.

The differences in mortality followed almost the same pattern as grip strength.

The unadjusted mortality rate was approximately 60.2 deaths per 1,000 person-years in the slowest chair-stand group compared with 26.5 deaths per 1,000 person-years in the fastest group.

After adjusting for demographic, lifestyle, and clinical factors, the fastest group had approximately a 37% lower mortality risk.

After researchers additionally accounted for moderate to vigorous physical activity and sedentary time, the difference was still about 31%.

Two completely different measures of muscular function were telling essentially the same story.

Women who maintained greater strength and physical capability had a lower risk of dying during the follow-up period.

This Wasn't Simply Because Stronger Women Exercised More

This might be the most important part of the study.

You could reasonably look at these results and think that stronger women probably exercise more, and exercise itself is what explains the lower mortality.

The researchers thought of that too.

Because participants wore accelerometers, the researchers could objectively measure how much time they spent sedentary and how much moderate to vigorous physical activity they accumulated.

When those variables were included in the statistical model, strength was still associated with significantly lower mortality.

The researchers also accounted for timed walking speed, which they used as a proxy for cardiorespiratory fitness. Again, the relationship remained.

They even adjusted for C-reactive protein, a marker of systemic inflammation, and still observed similar inverse associations.

That doesn't prove muscular strength independently causes longer life, but it makes the relationship considerably harder to dismiss as simply a reflection of who exercises more.

The researchers concluded that maintaining muscular strength may contribute to healthy aging through pathways that are at least partly distinct from cardiorespiratory fitness.

Strength Still Mattered in Women Who Weren't Meeting Aerobic Exercise Guidelines

This is another finding I think deserves more attention.

Greater muscular strength was associated with lower mortality even among women who were not meeting guideline-recommended levels of aerobic physical activity.

That does not mean strength training replaces cardiovascular exercise.

I wouldn't read the study that way at all.

Instead, it suggests that strength and aerobic fitness may provide somewhat different pieces of the healthy-aging puzzle.

You want cardiovascular fitness.

You want to stay physically active.

You want to avoid spending the entire day sitting.

But you also want to remain strong enough to get out of a chair easily, climb stairs, carry groceries, pick something up from the floor, maintain balance, and continue doing those things as you get older.

Healthy aging isn't just about how efficiently your heart pumps blood.

It's also about how much physical capacity you have left.

Why Would Strength Be Associated With Longevity?

There probably isn't one single explanation.

Muscular strength is connected to a long list of things that become increasingly important as we age. Stronger muscles make it easier to maintain mobility and independence, while also making everyday tasks less physically demanding.

Strength can also help preserve balance and physical function. If standing up from a chair requires nearly all of your available strength, you don't have much reserve capacity left. If the same movement requires only a fraction of what you're capable of producing, everyday life becomes considerably easier.

That concept of physical reserve may be especially important during aging.

Illness, hospitalization, surgery, inactivity, and injury can all cause rapid losses in muscle and strength. Someone entering those events with more strength has more capacity to lose before ordinary activities become difficult.

The study authors describe muscular strength as an important resilience marker, which I think is a useful way of looking at it.

Strength isn't simply about lifting heavier weights.

It's about maintaining enough physical capacity to remain resilient when life inevitably takes some of that capacity away.

Muscle Mass and Muscle Strength Aren't Exactly the Same Thing

This distinction is worth making because discussions about aging often focus almost entirely on muscle mass.

Maintaining muscle is important, but having more muscle doesn't automatically mean you are proportionally stronger.

Neuromuscular function, coordination, motor-unit recruitment, muscle quality, and the nervous system's ability to produce force all influence strength.

That's why I wouldn't reduce this study to "more muscle equals longer life."

The researchers measured performance, not simply muscle size.

Grip the dynamometer.

Stand up from the chair.

Produce force.

Complete the movement.

Those are measures of what the body can actually do.

As we age, that may be at least as important as what the body looks like.

The Chair-Stand Test Is Particularly Practical

One of the things I like about this research is that it doesn't require some futuristic longevity scan or expensive biological-age test.

You need a chair.

The women with the best chair-stand performance completed five unassisted repetitions in 11.1 seconds or less, while those in the lowest category took more than 16.7 seconds.

That doesn't mean 11.1 seconds is some magical longevity cutoff. The researchers divided their particular study population into categories, so these numbers shouldn't be treated as diagnostic thresholds for everyone.

But the larger point is useful.

How easily an older adult can repeatedly stand up from a chair tells us something meaningful about their physical capacity.

The same is true of grip strength.

These aren't glamorous measurements, but they are simple, inexpensive, and potentially informative.

Losing Strength With Age Isn't Completely Inevitable

Strength tends to decline as we get older, but the rate of decline is not fixed.

That distinction matters.

Aging will eventually affect everyone, but there is a major difference between experiencing some age-related decline while continuing to challenge your muscles and simply allowing decades of inactivity to accelerate the process.

Resistance training gives the body a reason to maintain strength.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to become a powerlifter at 70.

It means muscles need to regularly encounter enough resistance that maintaining strength remains useful to the body.

For one person that might involve barbells and dumbbells. For someone else it could involve machines, resistance bands, weighted carries, bodyweight exercises, or progressively harder versions of everyday movements.

The method matters less than continuing to provide a meaningful strength stimulus.

How Often Should Older Adults Strength Train?

The study itself did not test a specific resistance-training program, so we should be careful not to pretend it tells us the perfect number of sets, repetitions, or exercises.

It doesn't.

What it does support is the broader recommendation that muscular strength deserves a place alongside aerobic activity in healthy-aging guidelines.

Current U.S. physical activity recommendations encourage adults to participate in muscle-strengthening activity at least two days per week, and the authors specifically note that their findings support those recommendations.

For someone who hasn't strength trained in years, the goal shouldn't be to immediately start training like a 25-year-old athlete. The goal is to begin with movements that are appropriate for your current ability and then gradually make them more challenging.

The body adapts to what you repeatedly ask it to do.

If you want to maintain strength, you have to keep giving your body a reason to remain strong.

Women May Have Even More Reason to Pay Attention to Strength

This study specifically focused on older women, which matters because women face several challenges related to muscle and bone health as they age.

The transition through menopause is associated with hormonal changes that can affect body composition, bone health, and the ability to maintain lean tissue. At the same time, aging itself contributes to declining muscle mass, strength, and physical function.

That combination makes maintaining strength particularly important.

For years, women were often encouraged to focus primarily on cardiovascular exercise and light resistance work. Thankfully, that message is changing.

Women don't need to avoid getting strong as they age. They need to prioritize it.

The goal isn't bodybuilding unless that's what someone enjoys.

The goal is maintaining the ability to move through life with as much capacity and independence as possible.

Strength Is Probably a Marker and a Modifiable Trait

Here's where we need to be careful about interpreting observational research.

This study found an association between strength and mortality.

It did not randomly assign thousands of women to become stronger and then demonstrate that doing so caused them to live longer.

Stronger women may differ from weaker women in ways researchers cannot completely measure. Genetics, lifetime activity, nutrition, socioeconomic factors, disease history, and countless other variables could influence both strength and longevity.

The researchers adjusted for an impressive number of potential confounders, including objectively measured physical activity, sedentary behavior, walking speed, comorbidities, smoking, general health, body weight, blood pressure, and inflammation. That makes the association more convincing, but observational research can never eliminate every possible source of confounding.

So I wouldn't say:

"Getting stronger will reduce your risk of death by exactly 30%."

The study cannot prove that.

What I would say is that muscular strength consistently tracks with better outcomes, and strength is something we can actually improve through training.

That makes it a pretty reasonable thing to work on.

Don't Wait Until You're 70 to Start Caring About Strength

This may be the most practical lesson.

The women in this study were between 63 and 99 years old, but that doesn't mean strength suddenly becomes important at 63.

Building and maintaining strength is a long game.

If you're 40, 45, or 50, you have an opportunity to enter your later decades with considerably more muscle, strength, coordination, and physical capacity than someone who waits until those things have already declined substantially.

I think we sometimes approach healthy aging backward. We wait until strength disappears and then try to recover it.

A better strategy is to build enough strength earlier in life that you have something to preserve later.

You don't need to train like an elite athlete.

You just don't want your strongest years to be 30 years behind you.

What I Would Prioritize for Healthy Aging

If longevity is the goal, I wouldn't choose between cardiovascular exercise and strength training.

I'd do both.

Aerobic exercise helps maintain cardiorespiratory fitness and metabolic health. Regular daily movement helps reduce sedentary time. Strength training helps preserve muscular strength, function, and physical reserve.

Then support all of it with enough protein and total calories to maintain lean tissue, adequate sleep, and consistency over years rather than searching for whatever longevity hack happens to be popular this month.

There probably isn't a single exercise modality that solves aging.

The better goal is to maintain as many different forms of physical capacity as possible for as long as possible.

What This Study Does Not Prove

There are several limitations worth keeping in mind.

First, this was an observational cohort study, so it cannot establish cause and effect. We know stronger women were less likely to die during follow-up, but we cannot say with certainty how much becoming stronger would change an individual's mortality risk.

Second, the participants were ambulatory older women who were capable of completing the study's physical assessments and wearing an accelerometer. The findings may not apply in exactly the same way to frailer or institutionalized older adults.

Third, the study measured strength at baseline rather than repeatedly tracking how changes in strength over time affected mortality.

And finally, the study does not tell us exactly what type of resistance training is best for longevity. The researchers themselves note that future studies need to better characterize the type and amount of strengthening activity associated with specific health outcomes.

Those are important limitations.

They don't make the findings unimportant.

They tell us what question the study actually answered.

The Bottom Line

For years, cardiovascular fitness has received most of the attention when we talk about exercise and longevity. This new research suggests muscular strength deserves to be part of that conversation too.

Among 5,472 women aged 63 to 99, stronger grip strength and faster chair-stand performance were associated with significantly lower mortality over roughly eight years of follow-up. Even after researchers accounted for objectively measured physical activity, sedentary behavior, walking speed, inflammation, and numerous health factors, women in the strongest grip category still had about a 30% lower mortality risk than women in the weakest category.

That doesn't prove strength training will make you live 30% longer, and we shouldn't turn an observational study into a promise it can't support.

But it does reinforce something that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore as the healthy-aging research accumulates:

Don't just train your heart as you get older. Train your muscles too.

Being able to run, walk, hike, or ride a bike is valuable. So is being able to stand up easily, carry something heavy, climb stairs, catch yourself when you stumble, and maintain enough strength to keep doing those things decades from now.

Longevity isn't just about staying alive.

It's about staying capable while you're alive.

Reference

LaMonte MJ, Hyde ET, Nguyen S, et al. Muscular Strength and Mortality in Women Aged 63 to 99 Years. JAMA Network Open. 2026;9(2):e2559367. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.59367.