The good news is that studies have confirmed that resistance training is an effective first-line treatment for sarcopenia.
While we naturally lose muscle mass as get older, it’s absolutely possible for older trainees to build muscle through training. But what’s better–specialized, fad gym classes or classic resistance training? If you know Coach Kevin Don, you probably have a clue!
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Don here. This week I want to cover a topic that I see come up often in fitness and strength-related forums as well as with my own clients: can an older trainee build muscle?
Well, firstly, let's recap WHY one would want to build muscle mass, irrespective of being an older human or not.
In my first episode here as the new Get-Fit Guy, I took some time to define what fitness is and what the word means. Now, fitness isn’t about losing weight (unless your weight is causing serious health issues), it's not about whatever fad diet you are reeled in by, or the latest supplement that a single corporate-funded study done on seven white mice tells you that you need to add into your morning pill box rotation. NO… instead, fitness is the ability of an organism to optimally perform tasks related to survival and doing so in the absence of disease, illness, or injury.
From the moment we are conceived, we are all on board an unstoppable ride toward the as yet not totally understood great beyond. As we plow along this relentless path, our cells age, and the wheels start to fall off. One of the greatest predictors of morbidity and mortality is sarcopenia, which means “death of the flesh” and describes the loss of muscle mass. This can be quite problematic in terms of interacting with our own user interfaces of reality, such as unscrewing lids on jars, getting up out of our favorite chair, or climbing in and out of the bath. Loss of muscle mass means loss of balance, coordination, accuracy, agility, strength, speed, power, and so on.
So, why is it that we experience this loss of muscle mass as we age? Well, it’s down to what we call anabolic resistance. Anabolism (a Greek word with the root meaning to build up) is where we are in a state optimally suited to building new tissues. Catabolism is the opposite state. Aging populations (a.k.a. the entire human race by the nature of being organic) are anabolically resistant. As we age, it’s normal for appetite to decrease due to decreased sensitivity to taste, so foods just aren’t as tasty as they once were. Decreased activity levels and decreased blood flow in capillaries also lead to impeded nutrient delivery to muscles and cells. These and other factors mean that many seniors are actually malnourished. One study conducted in Singapore showed that 33% of the adult population over 55 were malnourished and 90.6% of those were classed as either frail or pre-frail.
The good news is that studies have confirmed that resistance training is an effective first-line treatment for sarcopenia. So what does resistance exercise mean and what would that training look like for an older cohort?
Well, resistance training, is, as it says on the tin, training in the presence of some resistance, typically an external load. I was at the gym the other day and after my training session, I decided to induce a low-grade fever in myself by using the sauna (check out my episode on heat v.s. cold therapy). From the sauna, I had a view of the pool where there was a very popular class with the elderly using weights and aerobics. I was quite interested in this because I was trying to understand why you would take 1lb foam dumbbells into a pool, where the water is holding them up, and assume that there would be any benefit whatsoever. Plus, we know impact loading from things like walking on an inclined treadmill and compression from a barbell is the only way to remodel bone, so why would we want to have an aging population treading water? The benefits I can see are that the water itself provides some external resistance, but only when pushing through it, not whilst doing a class on the spot and even then, once you adapt to the resistance, how do you increase the stress to keep adapting? You can't make the water thicker each week.
Of course, there wouldn’t be any impact on the joints and I know that is a major concern for many older people, but if you have pain in your joints when you walk, that's a case for seeing an orthopedic specialist, not for catastrophizing and body swerving natural human movement like walking. Another popular class I have seen is bounce fit, where you literally bounce on the spot on a mini trampoline. Again, we have removed muscular effort and impact, and it's taking place on the spot (due to the limitations of having a large number of people in a small studio space). These classes are not, by definition, resistance training. They are gimmicks created by an industry that makes money by bamboozling you at every turn with complexity bias, making you think that new equipment and new class offerings are the answer. The only thing that’s the answer to is your gym's client retention numbers.
Resistance training should be as simple as possible, hitting as many reps as possible through the biggest range of motion possible, using the most muscle possible.
Compound movements like the standing overhead press, the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press are going to be more useful in terms of overcoming anabolic resistance and sarcopenia than waggling a foam dumbbell about willy-nilly… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Remember that because you are resistant to the intervention, it’s very likely you need a BIGGER DOSE of the medication, which in this case is resistance training. So you may find you need to do more reps or more sets to get in a volume that allows you to force an adaptation.
I would recommend starting with twice-a-week training sessions, combining upper and lower efforts, of 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise at high effort. Remember, we are not all still swimming about in the primordial sludge thanks to adaptation and evolution. This was driven by external environmental stressors. The sole marker of the success of a species is its ability to reproduce. Passing genetic material on and propagating as a species is how the success of species is judged. In order to survive and propagate in harsh environments, organisms had to adapt, and this is why we have the wonderful variations of species we do. So, we NEED there to be an external stressor. No challenge, no change.
This is why resistance equipment, such as a barbell, dumbbells, etc., are way more useful than “aqua fit.” You cannot incrementally increase the drag factor of the water on yourself unless you want to design your own incrementally less aqua dynamic swimsuits. We need to say—ok, last week I did 3 sets of 10 at 20lbs, this week I will aim for 3 sets of 10 at 25lbs.
Here is a good idea too: I tell my clients I want the volume the same, but harder. So let's say in the above example they successfully hit 3x10 at 20lbs last week, this week I want 3x10 at 25lbs. In the event they can only squeeze out 8 reps in each set, they will have a 6-rep deficit in the total volume. So they would give me 3x8 and then a final set of 6 reps to have the same volume but a greater total maximum load across the session. Week one they did a total of 30 reps at 20lbs for 600lbs moved. If in week two they give me 3x8 reps at 25lbs, that's actually still only 600lbs moved in the session, irrespective of the load having increased. But if they give me the extra set of 6 reps, the total load increases by 150lbs across the session. So we know that we are driving a strength adaptation and overcoming the dreaded sarcopenia!
As always, please email me if you have any questions or comments! I love to hear from all my listeners, even if it's only to email them back to say they are wrong (email me to find out if that’s a joke). Contact me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or check out the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page!