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Maintaining muscle mass as we age By DAN STRAYTON Dave, Mt. Airy Dear Dave, That is an excellent question! Preserving muscle mass and strength is an important goal and should be one of the primary reasons we exercise – regardless of our age or gender. Our muscles allow us to move, they give us the firm/toned appearance everybody wants, they make our daily tasks easier and they allow us to enjoy our hobbies more. If you want to remain independent as you age, you will need muscles and strength to do it. Different types of exercise produce different responses in our bodies and different intensities of exercise produce different responses as well. Aerobic exercise (walking, running, swimming, aerobics, etc.) helps keep our heart, lungs and blood vessels healthy and functioning at high levels, controls body fat levels and can assist in maintaining bone strength in the legs, hips and spine. However, this form of exercise does not do a very good job of maintaining muscles mass and, thus, strength. In an excerpt from his book AstroFit, Dr. William Evans notes a study in which they studied the muscles of athletes in their 60’s and 70’s and compared them to control groups of sedentary older men and a group of active, younger men (average age 24 years). Two of the groups of older athletes were aerobic athletes (swimming and running) and the third group was weightlifters. The study showed that the older aerobic athletes were no stronger than their sedentary counterparts. While they had significantly less body fat than the control group, their muscle mass was essentially the same. The older weightlifters, however, had strength and muscle mass comparable to the younger men. Another study comparing the effects of aerobic and strength training exercise had one group walk for an hour five days per week while a second group strength trained three days per week. At the end of the study, the walkers had not increased their daily calorie burning over what it was at the start while the strength training group was burning significantly more calories at the end of the study versus the beginning. The reason: the walkers actually became less active the rest of the days when they walked (either tired or felt they’d done enough exercising) while the strength training people became more active as the study went on. These people became stronger and, as a result, felt better and wanted to be more active. The walkers did not. Done properly (meaning with enough load/intensity), strength training challenges your muscles and bones in a way that requires them to get stronger. Basically, your body is placed under a stress. If the stress is strenuous enough, your body responds by sending signals to your muscles and bones to create more of each so you will be better able to handle that stress the next time it comes up. Aerobic exercise is, by nature, a low intensity activity for your muscles, which is why you can maintain it for prolonged periods of time. Strength training requires that the challenge to your muscles be such that you can only perform the movement for a short period (10-15 repetitions) before fatigue sets in and you must stop. Walking for an hour is a completely different stress on your leg muscles than using the Leg Press machine and pushing against a fairly high resistance. While walking may not help your strength, the strength training will help you walk - faster, longer and with greater ease. Similarly, performing strength training exercises with very light weights will produce little of the effects you want to see. The weight you use when exercising should be challenging enough that your muscles fatigue fairly quickly and you feel you are unable to perform any more repetitions. It takes a little “oomph” to get the results you want. Aside from being more functional, individuals who maintain their muscle mass as they age also maintain their youthful appearance longer as well. Few things say “youth” like upright posture, “toned” muscles and a spring in your step. Muscles provide all of this and they don’t have to be bulky or even all that noticeable to do it. You can be strong and lean. You can be strong and not look like a body builder. You can be strong. Most professionals recommend a combination of both aerobic/cardiovascular exercise and strength training for optimum health and functioning. Keep your heart pumping, your lungs working and your blood vessels clean and relaxed while strengthening bones and muscles and supporting your joints. It actually doesn’t take that much strength training to see the benefits. A couple of days a week with the proper intensity can provide a great deal of results for the average person. It’s “quality over quantity” and “work smarter, not harder” and all that. So, don’t stop your aerobic exercise, just try to squeeze a couple of good strength workouts into your weekly routine. Good luck and keep moving! [Dan Strayton, general manager at Health Unlimited on Century Drive in Mt. Airy, holds a master's degree in exercise physiology and would be happy to answer any questions you may have about exercise, health and fitness. Write to him in care of the Mt. Airy Messenger, P.O. Box 897, Mt. Airy, MD 21771-0897; or send e-mail to dans@myhealthunlimited.com.] |
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