You don't stop because you're old

You don’t stop because you’re old.

When we are young, we often get involved in sports, and we are typically more active. This makes perfect sense; men are often at their peak when they’re in their early twenties and women by their mid-twenties. Professional sports people are often considered old in their thirties and in some sports by thirty-five you’re pretty much retiring and if you were good at your sport, you are now relegated to the commentary box or being a pundit.

Why is this the case? Once past the age of around thirty we begin to lose our muscle mass and strength.  The rate of loss reported across studies is averaging 0.47% per year in men and 0.37% per year in women, with this rate increases the older we become. Strength is lost more rapidly with studies suggesting a loss of strength anywhere from 2-5 times faster than loss of mass[1].

 The general consensus is that muscle mass decreases approximately 3–8% per decade after the age of thirty and this rate of decline is even higher after the age of sixty. This is a multifaceted process, with things such as reduced physical activity, hormonal (such as declines in testosterone in men and oestrogen in women) and metabolic changes etc contributing. Bone density can decrease too, when we are young new bone formation occurs more rapidly than the reabsorption of old, however as we pass thirty this begins to change too with new bone growth slowing.  As we age further, we can develop sarcopenia, which is characterised by reduced mobility, reduced muscle mass, weakness, issues with balance and an increased risk of falls.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Strength training is key here.  We know strength and muscle size can be increased by regular strength training.  If you start when you are young you can make considerable increases in muscle size and strength. When I started training aged fourteen, I could barely bench press 25kg, and weighed about 60kg.  Now, at time of writing, aged forty-eight I can bench press 180kg whilst weighing nearly 120kg. That’s quite a significant increase. Some of that will be improvements in technique and the skills involved but a good portion of it will be the increases in strength and mass. In all likelihood I have more muscle mass and certainly more strength now than I had at thirty-eight (Where I weighed around 100kgs and could be bench press around the 160kg mark) and certainly more than at thirty. This, I entirely attribute to strength training. 

Now lets assume for a moment that I were to lose muscle mass at the high end of the above 3-8% per decade[2] for the next two decades (taking me to nearly 70). Even if I experienced a 20% loss in muscle mass and a 50% loss in strength, that would still leave me with a good deal of mass and still bench pressing 90kg. The reality is that as I would actually continue to train during that time period, whilst I would experience some loss, I would expect to still have a somewhat higher degree of strength.  The point I’m making is not to brag, but to highlight if your starting point is higher ie you have more mass and strength to begin with, before that muscle loss really starts to kick in, you can better absorb that reduction than if you were already slim and relatively lacking in strength.  Anecdotally you start to notice the change in masters powerlifters as they pass sixty but a sixty or seventy year old masters powerlifter is often still stronger than an untrained adult of thirty.

Is it bad news for those who didn’t start young? Absolutely not! Studies consistently show that muscle loss and strength associated with aging can be slowed and to some extent reversed in aged individuals[3]. Even if you started later in life, you could still reap the benefits of regular strength training.  Slowing the process will help ensure that as we all get older we are able to maintain independent lives, and crucially a good quality of life.

I’m paraphrasing on this one but I feel it’s a really important take away point; You don’t stop because you’re old, you get old because you stopped.

For more on this topic and how to set up your strength training have a look at my book: Strength training for life.

[1] Mitchell WK, Williams J, Atherton P, Larvin M, Lund J, Narici M. Sarcopenia, dynapenia, and the impact of advancing age on human skeletal muscle size and strength; a quantitative review. Front Physiol. 2012 Jul 11;3:260. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2012.00260. PMID: 22934016; PMCID: PMC3429036.

[2] Volpi E, Nazemi R, Fujita S. Muscle tissue changes with aging. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2004 Jul;7(4):405-10. doi: 10.1097/01.mco.0000134362.76653.b2. PMID: 15192443; PMCID: PMC2804956.

[3]Lavin KM, Roberts BM, Fry CS, Moro T, Rasmussen BB, Bamman MM. The Importance of Resistance Exercise Training to Combat Neuromuscular Aging. Physiology (Bethesda). 2019 Mar 1;34(2):112-122. doi: 10.1152/physiol.00044.2018. PMID: 30724133; PMCID: PMC6586834.