Strength Training For Everyday Independence

Groceries are heavy for a reason, and they tell the truth. While walking home from the store with two full bags, Shelly had a simple realization: staying active is not just a “fitness goal,” it is how we protect our ability to live independently. If carrying groceries, walking a mile, lifting your kids, or taking the stairs leaves you out of breath, that is a signal your body is asking for more strength and stamina, not more guilt.

Shelly talks through why functional fitness and activities of daily living matter so much, especially for midlife moms and dads who want to feel capable now and later. She also shares a small lifestyle shift that she and her husband  made: walking to the gym together, using that walk as a built-in warm-up, then walking home after lifting. It is simple, realistic, and it turns exercise into something that supports real life instead of competing with it.

The conversation also get into facts and the long term goals: muscle mass naturally declines after age 30, but consistent strength training helps protect your metabolism, bone density, balance, and stability. That matters for fall prevention, healthy aging, longevity, and the confidence to keep doing what you love. Shelly offers easy ways to make it a part of your routine, including dumbbells, machines, and bodyweight basics like squats, lunges, push-ups, and pull-ups.

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Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share  the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day! 
In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, my friends. Welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is our Shelly's Shares episode. And I hope everyone is doing amazing today. I am going to jump in and talk a little bit about what we are doing on a daily basis just by leading our lives. How are we functioning day to day? And are we successfully doing our day-to-day activities with ease?

Groceries As A Fitness Test

SPEAKER_00 0:36

This came to me the other day as I was walking back from Whole Foods. We live about a half a mile away. And more often than not, my husband and I walk to the store. And I was walking back and I had two bags of groceries. And it came to me, I wanted to re-emphasize and remind everyone the importance of staying active, strength training for so many benefits, but one of which is to be able to do our activities of daily living successfully. I would talk about this a lot when I would be lecturing to my college students when I was teaching classes in person. And I would share every time when I would talk about fitness and exercise, one of the areas I would touch upon is the importance of staying active and strength training so that later on in life you can continue to do your day-to-day activities successfully and independently. So that is my question for all of you today. Are you taking care of yourself, your body, your physicality, your fitness, so that you can successfully carry groceries? Maybe you're walking home from the store like I did, or maybe you're just carrying them into the house, or maybe you have to carry them upstairs. Are you able to carry your if your children are little? Are you able to carry them with ease? All of these things that we want to be able to do at whatever stage of life you are you are at now and later on. And I'm specifically talking to my midlife moms and dads and beyond, right? Because we need to be able to be independent and be able to do our activities of daily living with success. And so I wanted to just jump in and remind everyone of this.

Building Activity Into The Day

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Something else that my husband and I do, and I'm pretty proud of, is that we recently started going to the gym together, and we've had a home-based gym for many years, and I've been so content with that. You know, I run almost daily, work out at home. We have a whole set of dumbbells, I have a pull-up bar, so it's been really, really great. But he had wanted for Christmas, he had asked for a gym membership. And so when I went in to get the membership, they were offering a special for couples. And so I ended up going for it and getting a membership for both of us. And it's been really cool because we go to the gym a couple days a week together, and it is almost a mile away, and we walk. We we walk there, we kind of speed walk a little bit, we warm up. It's a warm-up for us. We get our workout in and then we walk back. And it's great, it feels great. And like I said, I feel really good about us doing that, and I'm I'm proud of us because there's really no reason to drive when we can include the walk as part of our workout. So again, same thing, same topic is what I'm sharing with all of you today is the importance of staying active so that you can do these day-to-day activities and feel confident and have the energy and have the strength. So I just basically wanted to jump in and kind of remind everyone of that because I think we sometimes lose sight of that. And especially when it becomes a phase of our lives where it's yes, it's great to exercise and work out and strength train strength train for not just our health and so many different benefits, but also for how we are looking, right? We want to look good and look healthy and strong. In addition to all of that, we want to be able to do these day-to-day activities in a way where we're not feeling out of breath or we're not able to complete these activities because maybe we don't have the strength that we need in order to do these different activities, these day-to-day living, and we call them activities of daily living. That's what we call them, and that's how we refer to them. So it's just serves as a reminder. And also,

Strength Training For Healthy Aging

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I just want to share, I know I've talked about strength training in the past, and I will, I'm sure, again in the future, talk about it, but we do start to naturally naturally lose a little bit of muscle mass starting around the age 30. So it doesn't mean we're going to just deteriorate, but it's just a reminder of the importance to continue to strength train, to continue to keep that as a part of your exercise routine. And again, it can include dumbbells, it can include weight machines, and it can also include weight exercises that we use our body weight for, so such as push-ups, squats, lunges, pull-ups. Those are all excellent exercises as well, and they also help to maintain our strength. So, and again, we want to have that muscle because it helps with our metabolism, it supports our metabolism, it helps to strengthen our bones, it also definitely helps with balance and stability. I can't emphasize that enough, also, especially in the later years, because what are we more prone to do as we age? The issue and the risk of falling becomes a lot higher as we get older. And so, again, when we have the strength to be able to balance and we have less chance of falling, and then if we do happen to fall, we have less chance of getting a serious injury if we have strong muscles and also strong bones, because these muscles protect our joints, they help our bones be stronger, it they help with our mobility, and it's just really important for our healthy aging and longevity. I mean, the research consists consistently continues to show that maintaining muscle and strength supports our longevity and our independence, which is exactly what I am sharing with all of you today. So I just wanted to remind everyone the importance of not just all of the health benefits and not just for how we look and how we feel, but also to know that it's so important so that we can do our day-to-day activities and just function in our day-to-day lives successfully and independently. And that becomes more and more important as the years go on. So I just wanted to remind everyone of that. And while we're at it, just again, the long-term longevity benefits of strength training helps us to maintain our independence, helps us to maintain our vitality, our energy, and it helps to prevent us from being weak and frail. And again, we can function so much better when we have that strength, and we we have less of a risk of falling and less of a risk of having any serious injury if we do fall at some point in time. So it's really important. We want to continue to live our lives and do things that we love and enjoy our lives to the fullest. And this is part of that. And I just wanted to share, and again, it's not just about looking good and our aesthetics, it's also about training for ourselves, for our future, for our family, for our energy, our confidence, and our quality of life. And that is something that I always, always touch upon and remind everyone

Simple Moves To Start Today

SPEAKER_00 9:21

about. So, with that being said, take some time for yourself and your wellness on this day. If you haven't yet gotten some strength training in, some strength training exercise, I encourage you to do so. Again, it can just be a matter of doing some push ups, some squats, some pull ups, some lunges. Just get out there and do something for yourself on this day. And until next time, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week, everyone. And we'll see you next time on Words of Wellness.