No trainer, no gym: home lifting still pays off after 60, mostly in the legs

Resistance training is among the best-evidenced ways for older adults to hold on to strength and independence, but the standard version comes with a gym, equipment and supervision, all of which are real barriers for many people over 60. If training alone at home works, the reach of the intervention expands enormously. The open questions were basic ones: is unsupervised home training safe, do older people actually stick with it, and does it improve strength, balance, physical performance, quality of life or falls?

The authors systematically searched seven databases up to February 2021 for randomised controlled trials of unsupervised home-based resistance training in community-dwelling adults aged 60 or over. Twenty-one studies covering 4,053 people were included. The review tracked adverse events and adherence as markers of feasibility, then pooled the effects on muscle strength, muscle power, balance, physical performance, cognition, quality of life, body composition, physical activity levels and falls.

No major adverse events were reported across the trials, and adherence averaged 67%, ranging from 47% to 97%. Training modestly improved lower-limb muscle strength, muscle power measured through the sit-to-stand test, and balance assessed by postural sway. That is where the good news ended: handgrip strength, other balance tests, walking speed and broader physical performance measures did not improve, and neither did quality of life nor the risk or rate of falls.

This supports home-based training as a genuinely viable option rather than a poor cousin of the gym, at least for building leg strength and balance. But the misses matter: falls prevention is one of the main reasons this population is urged to train, and these unsupervised programmes did not deliver it. The authors themselves describe the evidence as preliminary and flag adherence, at roughly two sessions in three on average, as a problem to solve. How home programmes compare directly against supervised ones remains an open question.

If getting to a gym is what stops you or an older relative from training, this is a reason to think a home routine is safe and worth doing: legs got stronger, chair rises got easier and balance improved. It is equally a reason to keep the claims modest. On this evidence a home programme did not cut falls or lift quality of life, so it looks like a useful floor for staying strong rather than a complete answer.