As fun as it is to imagine you're an Olympic skier gazing out at a steeply pitched, icy course, visualizing precise, lightning-speed turns, a reality check: Is your workout more like Stacey Brown's?
"We have a golden retriever, and so I walk her three or four miles a day, and I do a weight training class twice a week," says Brown, 62, of Arlington, Va.
She knows muscle mass will decline without regular strength training.
"We have a fun group with a personal trainer and we call ourselves the Beastie Girls," she says, describing how her group helps her stick with it. She also plays tennis and golf.
And here's one way she knows she's different from an Olympic athlete: she would never push through pain or ignore it. She recalls a moment a few years back when she felt a stab of pain during a weight-training step class. "I was like, Oh my God, what happened," she recalls.
She struggled to walk out of the gym and knew she needed medical attention.
"The body does have an intuitive reaction to pain, and its intuitive reaction is to protect," says Dr. Andrew Mock, a family physician at Hoag, a health care system in Southern California, who focuses on preventive medicine. He says during an acute injury, the body can sense it's time to stop. In Brown's case, she had a partially torn calf muscle that needed rehab and time to heal.
Now she's fully recovered, and she does push herself, not to the point of pain, but definitely to the point of fatigue. For example, when she's bench pressing with 20-pound weights in each hand, she says she's giving everything she's got. "It's hard," she says with a sense of determination.
Dr. Mock says this is the kind of challenge that people can push through, though it may be a little uncomfortable and leave you feeling sore, which is OK.
"There's a big difference between soreness and pain. Soreness is normal when you start an activity and especially when you're increasing it," Mock says.
While our bodies intuitively know to back off during acute pain, there's value in pushing yourself to become stronger, even if it's uncomfortable or leads to some soreness. Mild, temporary muscle soreness after exercise is normal and indicates muscle fibers are repairing and strengthening, signaling a productive workout. But severe pain lasting several days is a sign you may be overtraining, which can lead to injury.
"If those symptoms are going on for more than 24 to 48 hours or significantly interfering with life, it really does suggest that we might have a dosing issue with the exercise," Mock says, and it's a sign it's time to modify your activity.
Generally, gradually increasing the intensity, or the dose, of exercise, is what can help you build strength.
"So when we think about the dose of the exercise it's how hard is it, how much are you doing, what are you doing and how often are you doing it?" Mock says. These are the levers you have to control the dose.
Brown has increased her dose over time. "I do feel stronger," she says. "Just things like carrying the groceries in or carrying a big heavy bag of laundry up the stairs and not feeling tired by that."
Build muscle to protect joints
One of the most common complaints in middle age and beyond is achy joints. A set of tennis may have been a breeze a decade ago, but now you feel a little pain or stiffness in your knees or hips.
"I've got a little arthritis here and there and I do feel like weight training helps to stabilize all the little tiny muscles around the joints," Brown says.
Muscles can act a bit like shock absorbers to distribute the impact of weight-bearing activities that can put pressure on joints. "Strength training protects joints, resulting in less stress through the body," Todd Wheeler, a physical therapist at MedStar Health Physical Therapy in Washington, D.C., told NPR in 2024.
Mock, who is also an athlete and strongman competitor, says this is another long-term benefit of regular exercise.
"When you are doing resistance training, like lifting weights or using exercise bands or doing yoga, you're actually putting more stress on the muscles, tendons and bones in your body," he says. The body adapts as you expose it to more. "So by lifting heavier weights, you're making the muscles stronger, you're making the tendons thicker," Mock explains.
It's not just about looking muscular, strength protects us from injury and makes everyday activities easier. "So if you trip over a curb, you're able to put that foot out fast enough and the tissues are strong enough that you're less likely to get hurt," Mock says.
For strength: Adopt an athlete's mindset
If you're healthy and motivated to get to the next level of fitness — or you're drawn to endurance events, such as long-distance running — you may be willing to withstand more pain.
"You can absolutely learn to have a higher threshold for pain," Mock says. "And we know that people who engage in regular physical activity do report lower pain symptoms to the same stimulus."
Exercise itself can help inoculate us from the sensations of pain as we move. "When we exercise, it actually releases the same chemicals that some of the pain medications release," Mock explains.
For instance, a small study of healthy individuals found aerobic exercise training increased pain tolerance. And a study of cross-country skiers, long-distance runners and soccer players found that high-level athletes had increased pain tolerance and could withstand higher heat pain, pointing to a higher threshold, compared to non-athletes.
As people age, it's important to maintain muscle mass through strength training. "The more I put into it now, the better off I'll be when I can no longer go as hard," says Aram Chakerian, who is in his mid-60s and lives in Napa Valley, Calif.
"Both my parents died after falls," Chakerian says. And he knows his efforts in the gym can help fend this off. "It's preventable," he says. "I need my balance, and my strength."
When it comes to balancing pushing hard and backing off, longtime exercisers say they listen to their intuition. "People need to listen to their bodies," says 43-year-old Alice McGrail, who lives in Boston. "I don't think it's necessarily like hero status to push through pain."
She pushes herself to stay strong, and she also recognizes her limits.
Copyright 2026 NPR
