In response to a column I wrote a while back about the importance of strength training to maintain independence in old age and maintain strength and muscle mass, I received an email from a man in his 60s who had never tried strength training. I did. He wrote that he understood the importance of strength training and joined a gym, but was curious about what kind of results he could expect. Will he be able to increase strength and muscle mass? Or should he expect his training to, at best, maintain the status quo and only combat the effects of ageing, where muscle mass gradually decreases and becomes debilitating?
Either way, he has shown that he intends to see this new health system through to completion and is committed to it.
Although strength and muscle mass typically decrease with age, both can be increased at any age. However, keep in mind that the amount of change will depend on your efforts.
A landmark study in 1990 paved the way for significant research on this topic. Author His MA Fiatarone, “High-intensity strength training in your 90s: Effects on skeletal muscle,” American Medical Association Journal. The term “nonagenarians” refers to people between 90 and 99 years old, making them the oldest people ever studied in this way.
In the research study, 10 “frail institutionalized volunteers” (the oldest being 96 years old) completed eight weeks of high-intensity resistance training. During that time, muscle strength increased by 174% and long-distance walking speed increased by 48%. The most surprising result was that the subjects gained some muscle mass. Prior to this study, it was assumed that although muscle strength may increase in older adults, it would be impossible to increase muscle mass.
Does muscle strength increase as you get older?
First, let’s assume that strength can be increased at any age, but that the degree of progress and ultimate goal decreases with age. It also assumes that although high-intensity training is required, it is proportional to the individual’s ability. Beyond these two considerations, there are a few other things to consider starting from your starting point. The weaker you are at first, the faster your strength will increase. In the study cited above, the subjects were frail and quite debilitated, but using that as a starting point, he was able to increase muscle strength by 174% in just eight weeks.
What happens to your body when you start resistance training?
Regardless of your starting point, here’s what happens when you start strength training. As I often say, the human body hates muscle and hates building muscle mass. Therefore, when you start training, your body tries hard to meet the desire to become stronger, without gaining muscle, and achieves this by exerting force more efficiently.
Let’s say that when you first try to use your biceps to lift something heavy, 100 muscle cells are recruited to do the task. As you train, the nerves that control your biceps will recruit more muscle cells, allowing you to exert more force.this is called neurological adaptation, and you will be able to use the resources you already have more efficiently. Gradually increase your muscle cells to 200, then 300, and so on, gradually increasing your strength. This type of change occurs rapidly at the beginning of training and explains the rapid increase in muscle strength. However, there is a limit to this adaptation, at which point strength gains quickly plateau.
Once neurological strength gains are maximized, further strength gains are much more difficult to achieve because they only occur through the addition of muscle mass. In other words, training should act to stimulate. hypertrophy, this requires the muscle DNA to direct more protein synthesis, which in turn generates new muscle mass. Before Fiatarone’s study in JAMA, it was thought that gains in muscle strength were possible but very limited in old age, and hypertrophy was out of the question. This study proved both assumptions to be false.
Do I need to change my diet once I start strength training?
Several other factors come into play when increasing strength and muscle mass. If you want to get stronger, you have to overload your muscles. To continue progressing, this means that once your muscles have adapted to a certain load, you need to increase the load. Otherwise, your muscles will have no reason to change and your progress will stall.
If you are serious about increasing strength and muscle mass, you should adhere to a healthy muscle-building diet that includes sufficient amounts of protein. Typical protein intake for adults is approximately 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. If you weight train, this amount will increase somewhat depending on the intensity of your training, but be careful not to overdo it, as competitive bodybuilders consume as much as 1 to 1.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight. please. And don’t ignore the role of quality sleep every night. Because it adds to the body’s ability to recover from training and cope more effectively with the demands placed on it.
How much does “muscle memory” affect your return to resistance training?
There are many things to consider when it comes to increasing strength and muscle mass, including testosterone levels and genetic factors, as well as the benefits of muscle memory. If you have participated in resistance training in the past, the DNA of each muscle cell carries a memory of how it became bigger and stronger. When you start training again, you don’t need to be taught how to grow muscles from scratch. Instead, muscle memory kicks in and you can “regain” much of the muscle mass you’ve lost (depending on your age), and you’ll be able to do it faster than when you first took it.
Contact Bryant Stanford, professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Hanover College, at [email protected]..
