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Strong Women
Rheumatoid arthritis management: “How strength training has slowed my disease progression”
By Sarah Blake
4 years ago
2 min read
Living with arthritis as a young person can be life-defining. But when writer Sarah Blake found out that her RA had led to permanent damage in her knees, she took up strength training – and she’s not looked back since.
On the face of it, my weekly Fitbit report seems pretty unremarkable: 10,000 daily steps, three or four resistance training sessions a week, and a cardio fitness score that’s where it should be for my age.
Yet every time that report hits my inbox, I’m reminded of two things: how lucky I am to be able to sustain this level of activity nearly four decades into a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and how thankful I am to have ‘found’ resistance training. Lifting weights builds muscle; muscle protects my joints; protected joints mean, for me, a better quality of life for a longer period of time.
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