In my two most recent books, The New Rules of Lifting and The New Rules of Lifting for Women, I make the case for strength training as vital, life-saving exercise, even though most of us start out doing it for appearance or performance. In my case, it was both: I wanted to play football, and I didn't want to be the skinniest, weakest, slowest guy on the field. (I had to settle for being slow, thin, and average in strength, but even that was a dramatic improvement.)

Convincing people that strength exercise has benefits beyond the obvious has been an uphill battle. And, thanks to this item in the New York Times Magazine, part of its annual "Year in Ideas" feature, I understand why:

Conversely, if people approach strength training as a way to look better naked -- which, of course, it certainly is -- it's harder to convince them it has major health benefits.

One of those benefits, as I noted in both NROL books, is that strength in old age is a predictor of longevity. That applies to both genders, and it's been demonstrated with hand-grip strength as well as leg strength. But now, according to this item in the same feature, there's another reason to pursue strength:

The suggested reason why hand-grip strength is related to sexual appeal is entertaining, if not especially helpful:

Alas, the researchers note that these qualities are largely genetic. And I'll concede the general point about raw sexual appeal: You can't turn an average Poindexter into George of the Jungle. But you can improve strength throughout life, and you certainly can avoid premature decrepitude by maintaining that strength into your Viagra years.

Another benefit of strength training, especially in conjunction with a higher-protein diet, is the boost in your body's metabolic rate. I've preached the gospel of energy flux in my books as well as magazine articles like this one. The basic idea is the opposite of dieting; if you eat more while also exercising more, your body will burn more calories than it would with either practice by itself. Now there's actually a study showing that a higher metabolic rate, resulting in more "wasted" calories, leads to a longer, healthier life. Granted, the study was done with mice, and the metabolic boost was the result of a genetic manipulation, but it's still interesting:

So by making your metabolism run faster, you don't live longer by stopping the aging process. You just minimize the factors that might cause you to die prematurely. The good news is that we don't have to wait for scientists to figure out a way to do this medically. We can get the benefits by doing it the old-fashioned way -- with exercise and enough calories to keep the human machine running in a higher gear.

Works for me. (Or, I should say, I hope it works for me.)

Monday blog meat

• Another interesting tidbit from the "Best Ideas" feature: When scientists told hotel maids how much exercise they got in a typical day, the women responded as if they had been doing formal exercise. They lost fat and lowered their blood pressure. But just last week, the Times published this story, advising runners to "dissociate" from the activity by focusing on something else. Apparently, this has been shown to improve endurance. So people who have no time or energy for formal exercise can get the benefits by convincing themselves that they're getting regular workouts, while people who do have the time and energy for serious training can do better by pretending they're doing something else. I'm glad we got that straightened out.
• I'm not sure if this is related or not, but scientists in the U.K. have discovered that human brains have an irrelevance filter.