This is how you train your muscles in the second half of life

How fast do you build muscle as you age?

The Copenhagen study “Copenhagen Sarcopenia Study” (2019) showed that subjects who only start regular muscle training very late at the age of over 80 years can still increase their muscular performance by 175 percent. To do this, they required twelve weeks of training with a load intensity of 80 percent of the voluntary maximum strength. Muscles are so dynamic in their adaptability that they show improvements in performance quickly and efficiently at any age, giving us the resources to maintain our quality of life for a long time.

What are the differences in muscle building between men and women as they age?

Perceptions about women’s athletic performance still persist because the capabilities of the female body have not yet been fully understood and explored. Especially in endurance sports such as marathons or triathlons, women show great and rapid developmental progress. These indicate that endurance is probably easier to train in women and that the female body reacts more quickly to training stimuli with increases in performance.

In the area of ​​muscle training, on the other hand, there is still a lot of ambiguity: Do training sessions for women have to be fundamentally different, and if so, what is appropriate? What does the training load have to be like in order to achieve the right adjustments and effects in the long term? Such questions are legitimate. The influence of cyclic hormone changes and the menopause must also be taken into account within the training process. In childhood, there are hardly any differences in physical performance between the sexes. Larger physiological differences between boys and girls can only be described with the onset of puberty and the change in the hormonal balance. When it comes to endurance performance, the two sexes differ quite significantly on average.

While the average before puberty for both sexes is around 3.2 watts per kilogram of body weight, girls show no changes after the onset of puberty, while boys increase relatively quickly to four watts per kilogram of body weight. The power in relation to our body weight is given in watts per kilogram. Two watts per kilogram is considered a fitness factor for health in adults. Young people can already achieve a lot during puberty. In the analysis of the muscle strength of the sexes, such clear studies have not yet been carried out.

In 1877 the scientist, doctor and women’s rights activist Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi found greater differences in the development of strength and development during menstruation, but the results were not clear, as some women showed higher values ​​and other women lower values. To this day, there is still no consensus in science as to what influence menstruation and menopause with their hormonal changes have on muscle strength and muscle training in women. Much more research should be done in this area.

How does muscle building differ between the age groups of 50, 60 and 70 years?

Aging leaves marks all over our body and especially on the muscles if we don’t do something about it. Unfortunately, many people lose so much of their muscle strength with age that many everyday activities become much more difficult for them and their abilities and performance decrease significantly – and this severely affects the quality of life.

The German Society for Internal Medicine made specific statements on this in 2017 on the occasion of the “Day of the Elderly”: From the age of 30, the organism converts 0.3 to 1.3 percent of the muscles into fatty tissue per year. This means that from the age of 30 on average about 1 percent of muscle is lost every year! This is dramatic because it has serious consequences for our health. Around 30 to 50 percent of the muscle mass gradually disappears by the age of 80 – and that drives us into illness and the need for care.

dr Patrick N. Siparsky from Duke University in Durham (Great Britain) showed in a study entitled “Muscle Changes in Aging” in 2014 that from the age of 30 the strength of the muscles decreases by 10 to 15 percent every 10 years. Between the ages of 70 and 80, around 25 percent of muscle strength is lost due to sarcopenia. The more you do for it, especially in old age, the longer muscle strength is retained. A trained 60-year-old can even have more muscle power than an untrained 30-year-old! There is a minimum strength that is necessary to maintain one’s independence and to avoid the need for care.

What exercises are best for building muscle as you age?

Which physical activity should older people choose? This question incorrectly assumes that the positive adjustments of endurance and muscle training are independent of each other. For this reason, it is often recommended to run both independently. But it is precisely this comprehensive recommendation that makes it difficult for many older people to find their way into the training at all. That’s why those who decide to exercise usually go the supposedly “easier” route of endurance training.

However, this is not ideal for preventively or even therapeutically tackling the health impairments associated with the aging process! Endurance training can increase muscle mass and muscle strength in older people. This can be seen, for example, in the thigh muscles of senior citizens after regular bicycle ergometer training: the muscles are less stressed compared to strength training, and the muscular adaptation is inevitably somewhat lower. Nevertheless, it is a health-relevant variable in the fight against aging processes.

Contrary to previous claims, regular muscle training not only maintains muscular health, but it also positively influences blood pressure, metabolism, many cardiovascular risk factors and diseases such as diabetes and cancer – and thus reduces the mortality rate. If you can’t or don’t want to train both, i.e. your endurance and your muscle strength – that would be ideal! – then I recommend you: Decide on strength training because of the larger spectrum of comprehensive and far-reaching positive effects.

The older we get, the more intense our muscular training and stress must be in order to be able to maintain the quality and quantity of muscle strength and mass. Our muscles are extremely resilient, trainable and can develop positively at any age! Simple movement in everyday life or only endurance training fall short, especially from the age of 50. In both cases, the stimuli are far too low to reach the fast white muscle fibers. They are the focus of sarcopenia, and this always means targeted training with higher or high and intensive strength loads. We can use two different forms of training for this:

• Volume training: You choose 2 to 3 loads with high reps (8 to 15) in two to three sets and medium loads (60 to 75 percent of maximum strength), but train to the maximum exhaustion of your muscles. For fast and effective muscle growth, the most important stimulus is the energetic exertion of the muscles up to the maximum exhaustion of the muscles. You can tell by the fact that your muscles “burn”. This is usually the case when you think during an exercise: “That was pretty exhausting, that’s enough” and then do one to three more repetitions. Inexperienced people are well advised to use this form of training, as are all those whose muscles are already weak.

• High Intensity Training (HIT): When training, you rely on a small number of one to six repetitions, but on high to maximum intensity – that means loads of over 75 percent or up to 100 percent of muscle strength. With this form of training, you achieve that the interaction of nerves and muscle fibers in particular improves: No matter which form of training you choose: you should train at least twice, preferably three times a week. If you really can’t fit a 30-minute workout into your daily routine, try to do at least two workouts in ten days.

Which diet is optimal for building muscle in old age?

In order for our organism to be able to build muscles, it not only needs the right intensive training stimuli, but also “building material”, namely the right amino acids. We have to get enough of these proteins from our food. However, since the organism cannot utilize protein as well with increasing age as it did when it was young, it needs more from the age of 50 anyway, and especially if it is to build muscles.

Therefore, a protein-based diet is an important basis for preventing or resolving sarcopenia. Therefore, consume about 30 to 40 grams of protein with each main meal. If you can’t do this with food, you can also use protein shakes. The essential amino acid leucine in particular should be included every day because it stimulates the growth hormone mTOR and thus promotes muscle growth.