When you're old, you can hang out in doctors' offices, or you can hang out with your friends and pump iron. The latter choice is way more fun, say women in the seniors circuit class at Edmonton's Riverbend Athletic Club.

Their ages range from 71 to 81, but they look a decade younger. Their time machines are the weight equipment they hit every Thursday morning. It's part of a healthy lifestyle that sees them doing some form of physical activity most days of the week.

Some older people think they're too old or too frail to strength train and worry they'll hurt themselves. But there's nothing better if you want to really live as opposed to just being alive, says Cathy Matthews, a personal trainer, who guides the women through their resistance training.

"This older demographic is realizing that we are living longer, and they want to continue living in their homes, looking after themselves, travelling, and playing with their grandchildren," she says. "These ladies live full lives."

Most in the group have known each other 10 to 15 years. Muriel McPherson was one of the last to join, eight years ago. She started exercising out of loneliness.

"My sister had just died and I was feeling really low," McPherson says. Her next-door neighbour, who was a regular at the athletic club, suggested she start exercising and showed her around the facility.

"I tried everything out, spending one day with a personal trainer who put me through my paces. While we were doing this, she said, 'Oh, there's an aerobics class just starting,' and, push, that's how I got started," McPherson says.

"If she hadn't done that, I would never have gone on my own. I would have thought, oh I can't do that, I don't know these people and they don't know me, but they were all so friendly. Everyone came up and introduced themselves, and I felt so good I kept coming back."

McPherson, 76, says the aquatics, aerobics and strength training classes she takes allow her to continue

living independently, but the social part of exercising with her friends is just as important.

"I'm a person on my own, so I very much need this ... because I never see anybody."

If she didn't strength train, her core muscles would be weak, her balance would be worse and she'd be at a higher risk for falls and hurting herself.

Research shows injuries due to falls are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly population.

Approximately 40 per cent of people over age 65 fall at least once a year, and those 85 years and older are more likely to die from falls and hip fractures than from heart disease.

"I hope I never have to find out what would happen if I didn't exercise," McPherson says.

It takes longer for older adults to realize the benefits of resistance training than younger people, Matthews says, but everyone sees improvement.

"Even if you're frail, staying active and mobile and on top of your balance and flexibility so you can respond more quickly to changes in the terrain, those kinds of things help you enormously," Matthews explains.

"If you're fairly strong and able to push yourself a bit, you will build strength and some muscle, but it does decrease with age."

The women train on machines and with free weights, but the machines, in a way, are safer for them, because they're on a fixed plane and there are more controls, Matthews says.

"With free weights, technique is far more important because you're controlling the plane. You've got to have balance, it's far more involved.

"On the other hand, working with free weights translates better into functioning in the real world," she explains.

Hippocrates, a third-century B.C. Greek physician often referred to as the "father of medicine," once noted: "All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labours to which each is accustomed, become thereby well-developed and age slowly; but if unused and left idle, they become liable to disease, defective in growth, and age quickly."

In other words, use what you have or lose it.

"I have a strong core and I don't want to lose it," Eleanor McTeague, 78, says after the hour-long class.

"I just feel better when I exercise."

Joanne Towers, 81, who has been active all her life, also wants to maintain what she has.

Adds McPherson, "I just wish I had started sooner."

czdeb@thejournal.canwest.com