Lifting heavy weights around the time of retirement could preserve leg strength into older age, research suggests. People naturally lose muscle function as they get older, and experts see faltering leg strength as a strong predictor of death in elderly people. Previous short-term studies have shown that resistance training, which can involve weights, body weight or resistance bands, can help prevent this happening. New research has explored the long-term effects of a one-year supervised resistance training programme using heavy weights. For the study, 451 people of retirement age were randomly…