Written By: Chris Toland, Sport & Exercise Scientist (ATH/HM) M.S. CSCS, USAWL1, CFNP
SUMMARY OF BENEFITS:
AGE LIKE A FINE WINE
It is no secret as we age out of our prime years our bodies start to progressively decrease in skeletal muscle mass. Everyone wants to feel young and is searching for that fountain of youth. The answer to your questions does have a fountain in it. Even though it may not be as majestic and mythical as the one Ponce De Leon spoke about, the answer you’re looking for is RESISTANCE TRAINING. Resistance training will help increase skeletal muscle mass and strength which greatly impact your quality of life, decrease mortality rates and improve your metabolism. Outside of strength and muscle building, other benefits consist of improving bone mineral density, disease prevention, improved cognition, improved cardiovascular health, help with anxiety and depression, and the list doesn’t end there!
LET'S DIVE INTO SOME MUSCLE PHYSIOLOGY, SHALL WE?!
Skeletal muscle makes up 30-40% of our body mass and becomes more and more compromised as we age. Declines in muscle mass approach nearly 10% per decade when we reach our thirties and are accelerated with progressing age. Loss of muscle mass is particularly concerning, given its important roles in physiological processes including movement, metabolism, disease and infection resistance.
Furthermore, declines in muscle health have been associated with premature mortality among community-dwelling older adults. As a result, exercise training interventions that save muscle mass and function have enormous potential to improve the experience of aging and reduce the incidence of age-related conditions that deteriorate quality of life. Progressive resistance exercise training represents the most widely recognized strategy to combat age-related muscle atrophy and improve overall muscle health on multiple levels: 1) muscle mass, 2) neuromuscular performance (e.g., strength and power), and 3) cellular and subcellular adaptations.
USE IT OR LOSE IT!
Muscle atrophy is inevitable to start around the fourth decade of life. Declines in muscle mass approach nearly 10% per decade and are accelerated with advancing age. Resistance training can combat this issue and not only maintain muscle mass, but also gain muscle tissue as you grow in age. Our muscle consists of different types of muscle fibers. Each myofibril (muscle fiber) type (Ia, IIb, IIx) has its own role and capacity for different types of exercise.
These fibers start to atrophy and convert from fast to slow, which not only effects our performance in the weight room, during sporting activity with friends and family, but also has a major effect on activities of daily living and can greatly affect our health. Furthermore, If you stop training (or never start) you’ll see these effects much more rapidly.
Severe muscle mass decrease is what physiologists call sarcopenia. However, sarcopenia describes severe muscle loss that strays from the norm. Sarcopenia affects your gait, balance, and overall ability to perform daily tasks. However, moderate to high-intensity resistance training has been shown to greatly improve strength, neuromuscular function, mobility, and muscle hypertrophy – and more so in Type II fibers.
Another effect of resistance training is its relationship with protein synthesis. You might be asking yourself, what in the world is protein synthesis? All you have to know is protein synthesis in simple terms is the ability to make proteins and you want a positive net of protein synthesis to breakdown ratio. Proteins are extremely important and are responsible for a lot of cool functions in the body. They are involved in transport, structure, catalyzers for cellular action, and they protect the body from infection and disease. We need proteins to live and you are making them right now as you read this blog. But as we age protein synthesis declines and the ability to grow muscle and strength is impaired if we don’t train. After resistance training protein synthesis is elevated for 48 hrs. Protein synthesis (which is the process of building up new proteins after breaking down current proteins in muscle, this happens after exercise) has an increased sensitivity to training from anabolic (constructive aspect of metabolism) stimuli such as resistance training and nutrition are negatively affected from age. Despite this notion, resistance training has been shown to improve muscle protein synthesis in young AND older populations, which in turn improves muscle strength and skeletal muscle thickness if we continue to train consistently over our lifespan.
OTHER HEALTH BENEFITS OF RESISTANCE TRAINING
Resistance training can greatly affect your quality of life! So treat yourself to exercise because if you want to age like fine wine,keep out of the doctor’s office and enjoy your golden years – you have to Train Smart & Train Hard!
Now you might be asking yourself: This is great, but how long, how many days a week and what type of resistance training do I need? Don’t worry! Let me lead the way and give you some insight. So I will lay out a little principle called the FITT (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type) principle which gives a nice overview of how to go about your training plan.
FITT PRINCIPLE
QUICK RECAP
As we age, we lose muscle mass and quality of performance and life can be affected. But there is an answer to these problems and that answer is consistent resistance training that can not only maintain our muscle mass, but also help gain and grow it if we train hard and train smart. Ask your coach at ATH about best practices for you, so they can place you on the best track for success!
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REFERENCES
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