You trip on the sidewalk. In that split second, your survival doesn’t depend on how much you can bench press; it depends on how fast you can grab the handrail or catch yourself.

That speed, called muscle power, declines about two decades earlier than muscle strength does. The problem is that most of us stop training for it in early adulthood.

Long-term studies now show a clear link between muscle power and how long we live.

Muscle Power and Longevity

A group of international researchers followed nearly 4,000 adults between the ages of 46 and 75 for about 11 years. They found that muscle power was a much stronger predictor of early death than muscle strength. Participants with the lowest muscle power had about a six-times higher risk of dying during the study period compared with those with the highest power levels.

In other words, how quickly your muscles can produce force seems to matter more for long-term health than how much force they can produce at maximum effort.

“What may explain the mortality data is that many daily activities older adults struggle with depend more on power than strength alone,” Sean Langan, a research scientist and exercise physiologist, told The Epoch Times.

When muscle power drops too low to perform these movements well, the risks start to stack up. There is the immediate danger of falls and injuries, such as a broken hip, which can be life-altering. There is also the slower, indirect effect: People often become less active because everything feels more difficult, which can further increase the risk of early death, Langan said.

On top of that, muscle power declines faster with age than muscle strength. One study found that power began declining about 20 years earlier than strength.

“Muscle power is a youthful quality,” Langan said. “When you look at older adults compared to young adults or children, the one thing that really stands out in how they move is muscle power.”

Power vs. Strength

In simple terms, strength is about how much you can lift. Power is about how fast you can produce that force.

Strength shows up mostly in slower, controlled tasks. Think about carrying heavy grocery bags, holding a suitcase, pushing a stuck door open, or lifting a box from the floor and setting it down carefully.

Power, on the other hand, comes into play when speed matters, including standing up quickly from a chair, climbing stairs, catching yourself when you trip, stepping off a curb, jumping out of the way of something, or reacting to a sudden loss of balance. These movements happen in fractions of a second.

“Olympic weightlifting is a good example of power,” Josh Wood, health educator and strength coach, told The Epoch Times. “There is a minimum speed required to launch the weight into the air,” he added. “So, athletes are essentially competing to see how much weight they can move at, or above, that speed.”

In technical terms, muscle power is simply force multiplied by velocity—or strength multiplied by speed.

“This shows us that strength is a key part of power,” Paul Ehren, a master personal trainer and functional nutrition practitioner, told The Epoch Times. You can’t be powerful if you don’t already have a basic level of strength.

You can also get a rough idea of which one you’re stronger in with simple assessments at the gym or even at home. For strength, this might mean how much weight you can lift for three to five reps on an exercise like the leg press. For power, jumping drills, plyometrics, medicine ball throws, and sprinting are common ways to measure how quickly you can produce force, Langan said.

How to Build Both Safely

Building a strength foundation is the first requirement for developing power, Ehren said. For that reason, he would never start either an athlete or a non-athlete on a power-focused program without first building a solid strength base.

“The risk of injury is simply too high,” he said.

A well-structured resistance training program is usually enough to build a foundation. Once that base is in place, training can gradually shift toward power.

Strength is usually built through resistance training with progressive overload—using heavier weights for three to five reps. Training muscle power requires increasing the speed of repetitions and including more explosive movements, Langan said.

For example, machine-based movements, such as a leg or chest press, can help build strength and muscle size, while exercises such as a dumbbell “clean and press” place more emphasis on power.

“The goal isn’t to become exhausted,” Langan said. “It’s to start each rep feeling fresh so you can produce as much force as possible.”

For older adults, however, improving power doesn’t mean trying to turn them into Olympic weightlifters or CrossFit athletes, Ehren noted. “In many cases, simply helping them move their legs and feet more efficiently and more quickly can already make a big difference,” he added.

Because these movements involve speed and impact, they can carry a slightly higher injury risk, especially for beginners. For that reason, Langan recommended introducing them gradually and building up over time.

Many adults gravitate towards activities like traditional weight training and marathon running, which are great for strength, cardiovascular health, and metabolism, but they are not sufficient to maintain muscle power, Langan said.

“I’d highly encourage people to never get too far away from sprinting and jumping-type activities—as long as they can be done safely. It is the first thing aging targets on a muscle level, and we should do anything we can to preserve it,” he added.