Bending Your Own Aging Curve – What to do About Age Related Muscle Loss PART ONE

 

Bending Your Own Aging Curve – What to do About Age Related Muscle Loss

 

You know I’m a bit obsessed with the idea of “bending your own aging curve”, especially as it pertains to using movement as a means to bend it, right?

 

If we consider that muscle mass begins to decrease in our 30’s, then the concept of “bending your own aging curve” is something that should interest everyone, not just us “goldeners”. 

 

 

Sarcopenia

The official term for age-related muscle mass loss is sarcopenia. 

 

Unfortunately, the loss generally accelerates after the age of 60, especially for those leading a sedentary lifestyle.

 

It’s a vitally important topic because age-related loss of muscle mass leads to loss of strength, impairs function, and predisposes disability.  

 

I’m not trying to fear monger or blow the pessimistic horn loudly about how awful aging is – aging is just a function of our human condition.

 

If we live long enough, we’re going to get older.  

 

BUT….. we have some agency over how we get older and we can change the course of our own aging curves so that it’s less likely to be a long declining curve.

 

What Helps Decrease the Effects of Sarcopenia

 

Evidence clearly points to our ability to reduce the deleterious effects of age-related muscle loss with exercise. 

 

Yep, exercise, and probably more than we think we need, especially as we age.

 

While movement can help with so many things about living in an aging body, resistance training, which creates hypertrophy within muscle tissue, is truly what builds and maintains muscle strength and power in all humans, regardless of our age.

 

Hypertrophy is an increase in the size of cells within muscle tissue making them more capable of force production so they can help us lift heavy things, stabilize us, help us move through space, get up out of chairs, climb stairs, and get up and down off the floor.

 

Studies have also shown that prolonged aerobic exercise can have some effect on building strength in certain muscles (think calves), but more importantly is tied to positive metabolic changes with the muscle tissue cells leading to better function and overall body strength.

 

Some Thoughts on What You Can Do Now

 

Start building strength now.  Yep, like today.

 

I know, I know, some of us are nervous about strength training.

 

There is often fear about getting hurt, doing it wrong, getting “big”.

 

What I really want is to empower you to, as we call it in the business, lift heavy shit.

 

Let’s take a step back, though, and remember that most of us aren’t really lifting heavy shit. 

 

Yet. 

 

We’ve got to start lifting something in order to get stronger, though.  So we’ll start with considering our own body weight.

 

Building muscle strength requires us to tax our muscles.  

 

Get ready because I’m going to now make a statement of the obvious…..

 

In order to build more force production (strength/hypertrophy) in our muscles, we have to build the ability of the muscle fibers to handle more force production.

 

????

 

Muscles don’t get stronger unless we tax them and allow them to adapt over time to the stimulus.

 

And muscles need to be taxed at higher rates over time – the stimulus (weight, reps, angles) will need to change in order to continue to maintain and reverse age related muscle loss.

 

For now, since we aren’t in a gym or learning environment together, let’s go back to the idea that lifting bodyweight is lifting something and a good place for many folks to begin.

 

For some of us, adding in body weight squat to chair or push-ups will tax the muscles enough to add strength… for awhile, then you’ll have to do more.

 

But for now, if you’re not regularly resistance training, might I suggest that you add in some regular (2 – 3 times a week) body weight exercises to your movement practice?

 

For most of you who are moving regularly and doing some yoga and movement essentials classes with me, try for 1 to 2 sets of 12 – 15 repetitions of any bodyweight resistance exercise 2 – 3 times a week. Take a short break between your sets.

 

If you’re recovering from an injury, haven’t been moving much, or returning to movement, do less at first. 

 

Don’t too much too soon… allow for adaptation with the idea that you are laying ground work to build slowly and steadily towards lifting heavy shit.

 

Don’t get too caught up right now in what exercises you should do… human movement is about pushing, pulling, bending and standing up against the force of gravity, rotating, reaching… pick a few things and for now and stick with them. 

 

I’ll be teaching some in person Longevity Strength workshops this spring, summer, and fall (2023) and am currently designing a new online platform that will include a Longevity Strength membership.

 

Stay tuned! 

 

For now….

 

Add some common body weight exercises to add to your movement routine:

• Squats
• Deadlift/hip hinges
• Push ups
• Step ups and step downs
• Arm/shoulder rows

 

These 5 exercises are aspects of many resistance training exercises, so practicing them, becoming competent at them, feeling confident that you have them in your movement vocabulary will serve you in adding in new and varied versions, as well as actual new types of resistance activities.

 

Many of us are avid walkers.  If you added just a few minutes of body weight strengthening to your daily walking time you could easily fit in one to two rounds of these 5 exercises.

 

Stop at a park bench and do 15 squat to bench and back up, 15 push-ups (yep you can take breaks between the 15 reps), 15 hip hinge to bench and back up, and 15 rows on each arm (you can just create tension or use your water bottle as a light weight).  Find a curb, or a stair, and add in 10 – 15 step ups on each leg. 

 

Check out my youtube video here as I perform these 5 mainstays of resistance training.  

 

It’s not rocket science to build some muscle strength, decrease the effects of age-related muscle loss, and bend our own aging curves.

 

We just have to do it…. because truly, if we don’t use it, we will lose it.

 

Stay tuned for PART 2 where I’ll define Slow and Fast twitch muscle fibers and why it’s so important for us to train the fast twitchers as a part of bending our own aging curves.