How quickly do you build muscles in old age?
The Copenhagen investigation “Copenhagen Sarcopenia Study” (2019) showed that subjects who only start their muscular performance very late at the age of over 80 can still increase their muscular performance by 175 percent. To do this, they needed twelve weeks of training with a stress intensity of 80 percent of the arbitrary maximum strength.
Muscles are so dynamic in their adaptability that they show improvements in performance quickly and efficiently at any age and thus give you the resources of maintaining your quality of life for a long time.
What are the differences in building muscle between men and women in old age?
Prejudices are still stubborn about the sporting performance of women because the abilities of the female body have not yet been fully recognized and researched. Women show big and fast development progress, especially in endurance sports such as marathon or triathlon. These indicate that the perseverance in women is probably better trainable and the female body reacts to training stimuli faster with performance increases.
In the area of muscle training, on the other hand, there are still many ambiguities: Training units for women have to be designed differently, and if so, what is appropriate? How must the training pollution be in order to achieve the right adjustments and effects in the long term? Such questions are justified.
The influence of cyclical hormone changes and menopause must also be taken into account within the training processes. In childhood there are hardly any differences in physical performance between the sexes. Only with the insertion of puberty and the change in the hormone balance can larger physiological differences between boys and girls. With the performance in the endurance area, the two genders differ quite clearly on average.
If the average before puberty is around 3.2 watts per kilogram of body weight in both sexes, girls show no changes after the insertion of puberty, while boys increase relatively quickly to four watts per kilogram of body weight. The performance is given as watts per kilogram in relation to our body weight. Two watts per kilogram are a fitness factor for health in adults. So young people can do a lot in puberty. So far there have been no such clear studies in the analysis of the gender muscle strength.
Already in 1877 the scientist, doctor and women’s rights activist Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi greater differences in strength development and development during menstruation, but there were no clear results, because some women showed higher values in other women.
To date, there is still no agreement in science about the influence of menstruation and also menopause with their hormonal changes to muscle strength and muscle training in women. Much more should be researched in this area.
How does muscle building differ between the age groups of 50, 60 and 70 years?
The age leaves traces everywhere in our body and especially in the muscles if we do not do anything about it. Unfortunately, many people with increasing age lose so much of their muscle strength that numerous everyday jobs make themselves much more difficult for them and that their skills and performance significantly decrease – and that significantly affects the quality of life.
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In 2017, the German Society for Internal Medicine provided concrete information on the occasion of the “day of the older person”: from the age of 30, the organism is converted 0.3 to 1.3 percent of the muscles into adipose tissue per year. So from 30 average, about 1 percent muscles are just lost per year! This is dramatic because it has serious consequences for our health. About 30 to 50 percent of muscle mass disappear until the age of 80 – and that drives us into the illness and 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 power of muscles reduced by 10 to 15 percent every 10 years. Between the 70th and 80th year of life, around 25 percent of muscle strength is lost through sarcopenia. The more especially in old age, the longer the muscle strength is preserved.A trained 60-year-old can even have more muscle strength than an untrained 30-year-old!There is a minimal force that is necessary to maintain your own independence and to avoid need for care.
Which exercises are best suited for muscle building in old age?
What physical activity should older people choose? This question incorrectly assumes that the positive adjustments of endurance and muscle training should be viewed independently of one another. For this reason, it is often recommended to carry out both independently.
But it is precisely this comprehensive recommendation that makes it difficult for many older people to find their way into training at all. That is why those who choose sport usually go through the supposedly “simpler” path through endurance training.
However, this is not optimal to take the health impairments in the context of aging processes preventively or even therapeutically! In this way, endurance training in older people can increase muscle mass and muscle strength. This can be seen, for example, on the thigh muscles of senior citizens after regular bicycle gometmers: Although the muscles-compared to strength training-is less stressed, and muscular adaptation is inevitably a little lower. Nevertheless, it is a health -relevant size in combating aging processes.
In contrast to previous claims, regular muscle training not only receives muscular health, but at the same time it affects positive blood pressure, metabolism, many cardiovascular risk factors and diseases such as diabetes and cancer – and thus reduces the mortality rate. If you cannot or want to train both, i.e. your endurance and muscle strength – that would be optimal! -, then I recommend that you decide for strength training due to the larger spectrum of comprehensive and far -reaching positive effects for strength training.
Also interesting: How to calculate your biological clock:
The older we get, the more intensive our muscular training and the 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! Easy moving in everyday life or exclusively endurance training falls significantly too short from the age of 50. In both cases, the stimuli is 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 power loads. We can use two different forms of training for this:
•Volume training:You choose 2 to 3 loads with a high number of repetitions (8 to 15) in two to three sets and medium load (60 to 75 percent of the maximum force), but train until the maximum exhaustion of your muscles. For fast and effective muscle growth, the most important attraction is the energetic exposure of the muscles to maximum exhaustion. You recognize this by the fact that your muscles “burn”. This is usually the case when you think during an exercise: “It was quite exhausting, now it’s enough” and then do one or three more repetitions. With this form of training, inexperienced good advice and all those whose muscles are already weakening.
•High Intensity Training (HIT): You rely on a small number of one to six repetitions during training, but to high to highest intensity – this means loads of over 75 percent or up to 100 percent of muscle strength. With this form of training you can achieve that the interaction of nerves and muscle fibers in particular improves.
No matter which training form you choose: you should train at least twice, better three times a week. If you can actually not integrate a 30-minute workout into your everyday life, try to create two training sessions in ten days as the understate minimum.
Which diet is optimal for muscle building in old age?
So that our organism can build muscle, it not only needs the right intensive training stimuli, but also “building material”, namely the right amino acids. We have to consume these protein materials in sufficient quantities through food. However, since the organism protein cannot use as well as at a young age, it needs more and more if it is to form muscles from 50 anyway.
Therefore, a protein -based diet is an important basis for avoiding or lifting sarcopenia. Therefore, take about 30 to 40 grams of proteins with every main meal. If you can’t do this through the food, you can also use protein shakes. Especially the essential amino acid leucine should be there every day because it stimulates the growth hormone MTOR and thus favors the muscle building.
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