Is It Possible for the Over-80s to Bulk-Up?

Older folk (like me) are urged to include resistance exercises along with their aerobic work-outs. The idea is that stronger muscles in old age will be useful in maintaining mobility, preventing falls, and helping with getting up after a fall. They are also shown to have metabolic effects that can help improve vascular function and lipid storage problems.

A new study, reported in the Journal of the American Physiological Society, has thrown doubt on the possible effectiveness of continuing resistance training beyond age 80. Most octogenarian women have advanced sarcopenia – age-related loss of muscle mass – and the researchers wanted to see the effect of progressive resistance training on their aged muscles. Six women in their 80s exercised in a lab three times a week for 12 weeks. They used a thigh (quadriceps) strengthening machine, doing 3 sets of 10 lifts. Nine young women were included as a control group. Thigh muscle size was measured using MRI and muscle fibers obtained by biopsy were analyzed, before and after the 12-week training period.

Training resulted in the octogenarians increasing the amount their quadriceps could lift by 26%, compared with 36% by the young women. The latter increased their muscle size by 5%, while the octogenarians showed no increase in size. (A previous study had shown that 70-year-old women gained 5% muscle mass with training. And just in case you men were feeling that this didn’t apply to them, take heed; in a previous study, the researchers found that the muscles of octogenarian men also failed to gain strength with the exercise program.)

The biopsies confirmed the MRI results. There were no changes in the size of the individual muscle strands from the older women, pre- vs. post-training. So the amount they could lift was unrelated to improvement in muscle strength, but rather, according to the authors of the study, in how efficiently the muscles were synchronized and utilized.

In summary, this interesting study shows that exercise is good for octogenarians, but just not as good as was hoped. It may be better to build as much muscle mass as possible earlier in life - do all you can before 80!