Muscle, your key to an active and fulfilling retirement: 3 keys to keeping and building muscle in your 60s, 70s, and beyond

Are you really condemned to lose 10% of your muscle every decade after 60? Is age related muscle loss(sarcopenia) inevitable? Did you know that by regaining muscle you can help or prevent many of the diseases of aging like insomnia(sleeplessness), depression, diabetes, heart failure, vascular disease, kidney failure, stroke, osteoporosis, hip fracture, arthritis, and even dementia? In fact your muscles are your most important organ of longevity a study in the 80s showed that even frail 90 year olds could increase their strength by an average of 174% in just 8 weeks. What’s more, in a follow up study, some of the people who were reliant on walkers graduated to a cane.  But not just any strength exercise will grow muscle and we’ll talk about that more in a bit. 

So, what we used to think about muscle has been proven to be completely wrong. We used to think that age related muscle loss was inevitable, we used to think that you couldn’t recover muscle mass after losing it, we used to think strength training was dangerous if you were older, and we used to think that building muscle would do anything to help the rest of your body including brain health, hormones, and for the guys, even sexual health through improving erectile dysfunction(ED). In fact, if you hit 150 minutes of vigorous activity, there’s a 20% decrease in ED and hit 300 minutes, you reduce ED by 40% and muscle health is a big key for that. 

Here’s 3 Keys to Keeping and Building Muscle in your 60’s, 70’s, and beyond

Key #1 Freeweights vs Machines

Ideally your strength training is going to be a mix of both. Each type of exercise has its upsides and downsides and we’ll cover those here:

Freeweights: The upsides of freeweights, especially if they are done in standing are that you are not only challenging the muscles that are actively moving the weight but you are also challenging the muscles that stabilize the joints as well. In addition you are challenging your your balance, coordination and ability to move real life weights like groceries, grandchildren, and improving athletic performance(like your golf or pickleball swing). Downsides include achy joints especially if your strength isn’t enough to protect your joints when lifting, risk of overbalancing and having a fall if you are unfamiliar with the lift or have blood pressure issues. In addition, freeweight exercises struggle with being very specific to a muscle like your quad or calf(muscles in your leg). 

Machines: The upsides of machines are that they are very good at being specific to the muscle that you want trained. Need more strength in getting up and your quad muscle is the problem. Then the leg extension machine will exclusively target that muscle and at a measurable weight that you can control. In addition, if you suffer from aches and pains that even body weight exercises provoke, using a machine to get you up to strength might be a better option prior to moving on to multi joint and functional exercises. 

The downsides of machines are that they don’t train balance, coordination, and the machine does all the stabilizing for you. This means that when you are confronted with a weight “out in the wild”, your stabilizers may be the weak link putting you at risk of injury. This is why a good mix of both machines and freeweight/bodyweight exercises is best. 

Key #2: How do I know how much weight to select when working out?

So, recent research has shown that no matter what weight we select, we can get muscle growth as long as we work out to fatigue with each set. This means that whether you are working out at a higher weight relative to your 1 rep max(the maximal amount of weight you can move once) or a lower weight, the key is that each set takes that muscle to where you have very few reps in reserve(meaning you could do 1 or 2 more but not beyond). So, if you deal with arthritis and lifting heavier weights hurts your joints, go for a higher repetition number and if you don’t suffer from that, you can go at a higher weight and grow muscle more quickly. Only take 30s to 1 minute off between sets and aim for 3-4 sets per exercise with 2-3 exercises per muscle group. For our purposes, these are your  upper pushers(your chest, back of arms, and shoulders), your upper pullers(your back muscles, pull up muscles, and arm curls), your leg pushers(your glutes, quads, and calves), and your leg pullers(your hamstrings). Sprinkle some core work like planks, leg lifts, and rotation(obliques), and you’ve got a well rounded routine. 

Key 3: How to know if your strength training is “enough”. One of the keys to knowing if your strength training is getting the muscle results you want is in your soreness after.  The technical term for this soreness is DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness and it comes from you controlling the negative or eccentric part of the lift. For example, in the squat, your sitting down motion is the eccentric and the standing up part is the positive or concentric. When your muscles are sore, this means that they got enough “work” in your workout and now they’re healing. This usually peaks after about 48 hours, so you might not feel sore right away but you’ll feel the soreness growing over the first 24-36 hours after then peaking about 48 hours and subsiding.  This shouldn’t be a sharp or radiating pain afterwards. 

Bonus Key for Chronic Pain Sufferers: Now, if you’re suffering from a chronic pain condition like fibromyalgia, this DOMS may be too intense for you as will the exercise guidelines above. As a strength coach and physiotherapist, what I’ve found for people suffering from chronic pain is that we want to ease into lifting but we start off better with aerobic exercise. You probably know how much you can do before your pain lays you up in bed or severely impacts you. What we want to do is start our aerobic exercise(brisk walk) at a pace and time duration below the threshold that you have an increase in symptoms. For example, if you can walk 10 minutes without provoking symptoms then we try to build 2-3 of those walks into our day increasing by 1-2 minutes per walk per week until you can do a 30 minute walk at a brisk pace in 1 session. Then you can start with weight training at 1 set to slight fatigue and build from there. 

Confused about where to start? Book a call from the comfort of your home or office and  on your schedule with one of our Pain Specialists. You can schedule your call here.  Need help now? Come by and talk with one of our Doctors of Physical Therapy at no charge. We offer FREE consultations, which give you the opportunity to come in and meet us and see for yourself how we can help you.

Here are just a few of the things you will learn in one of our free consultation:

• What is the underlying cause of your pain? (hopefully nothing too serious!)

• Roughly, how long will it take to fix the problem?

• What to do to help – which doesn’t include painkillers, resting or surgery etc.

• What other, natural, drug free methods are there to speed up recovery alongside treatment?

Our consultations are great for anyone that may be “unsure” if physio is right for them, and they give you the opportunity to ask questions and see for yourself if we can help you.

If you’d like one of our limited free consultation sessions, please click here to schedule your free consultation or CALL us on 850-765-2779 to make a no-obligation enquiry.

Dr. Brandon is the owner and a Physio at Body Mechanix Physiotherapy and Fitness. Four of his favorite people call him daddy while he's been married to his other favorite person for 23 years. He enjoys teaching martial arts and is a Mestrando in Capoeira while in the mornings, he can be found working out with the guys in F3 around town.  He's the author of 4 pain relief guides for sciatica, low back, shoulder, and knees and the lead contributor to the Active Tallahassee Blog.