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"After the age of forty, all of us, even the athletic, lose about eight per cent of our muscle mass each decade, with a further fifteen-per-cent decline between
by imoldfella 9y ago
"After the age of forty, all of us, even the athletic, lose about eight per cent of our muscle mass each decade, with a further fifteen-per-cent decline between the ages of seventy and eighty. "
This has not been my experience. I have added pretty substantial muscle mass between the ages of 48 and 55 with fairly conventional weight lifting and diet with no PED's. My back squat has gone from 185 to 385 (pounds)and my deadlift from 265 to 465. 40 seems way too early to start packing it in.
- yathern 9y agoCongrats on the gains! Though of course you are just an anecdote. But I'm curious how much of this muscle mass loss is due to biological changes vs lifestyle changes.
- chrisseaton 9y agoWell it does say 'all of us', so a single anecdote does disprove it. I think the original commentator was pointing out the sloppy writing.
- matt4077 9y agoYeah. The article's sentence also fails to account for people dying, who lose much more than 8% of muscle mass, and really stupid robots reading the article, who lose none of their muscle mass, but will have trouble understanding that, sometimes, language is ambiguous and requires a modicum of contextual reasoning, or else every sentence would require dozens of qualifications and would read like a regulation on insurance law.
- jaggederest 9y ago"There may exist at least one person who may have lost muscle mass over time."
- stevenwoo 9y agoI think my exercise and physiology textbook stated an age related decline in muscle mass happens in everyone after about 40 without a concerted program of strength training to stave it off.
- imoldfella 9y agoThat certainly sounds more credible. I encourage all the HN'ers north of 40 to try weightlifting. We have members older than myself seeing good results.
- bduerst 9y agoThis metric is without targeted anaerobic exercise like weightlifting. Decreases in hormones and neurotransmitters result in the body maintaining less muscle mass, even with aerobic exercise.
- nscalf 9y agoAs far as I know, there really isn't too much risk associated with hormone replacement therapy. If you add that into the mix, I'd be surprised to see any significant shifts over the human lifespan.
- orbitur 9y agoDoesn't your body produce even less if you supplement, leading to problems if you quit?
- nscalf 9y agoSo as far as I understand, the answer to that is really "it depends". I'm not a doctor, I just find this stuff interesting. If you do it properly, I think you can supplement things like testosterone in a sustainable way, you'll have to cycle on and off the drugs to prevent long term damage to your body's ability to produce endogenous hormones, and then you'll take things that decrease side effects of the doping. For example, a lot of fighters get caught taking drugs that decrease the estrogen production in the body, rather than actually getting caught taking steroids. Leagues ban steroids AND things that are used in coordination with steroids to increase the ability to enforce the steroid ban. Now, I would argue that even if it does cause a long term dependency, it should be viewed, for the average person, the same way heart pressure medication is viewed. You have a medical condition, and this is a prescription you'll take for the rest of your life, but it will make you live a longer, healthier life.
- aqme28 9y agoWithout changing your lifting regimen? I find that hard to believe.
- mlevental 9y ago2x improvement in 7 years? there's nothing unbelievable about that?
- berdon 9y ago2x improvement just depends on where you start in relation to where you have been. If you haven't lifted legs heavily for a while you'll have to start lower but you'll quickly regain that lost grown. Well, you'll regain the lost ground faster than you'll go up past your old max.
- 0xbear 9y agoBy definition, to lift heavier weight one has to change their lifting regimen.
- beat 9y agoThe regimen isn't really the amount of weight involved. It's how often you do it, how many reps, etc. For example, I'm doing interval training - something like, say, 10 chest presses, 10 lateral pulls, 30 seconds of crunches, and repeat this cycle three times. Then go to the next cycle, which might be something like incline pushups, bicep curls, and squats, again 3x. If I were to change to, say, 5 reps at maximum weight just one time(heavy strength train), that would be a change in regimen.
- 0xbear 9y agoThat’s not a lifting regimen. You don’t need crunches if you’re doing heavy squats or deadlifts. You don’t need bicep curls at all. And chest press must be balanced with barbell rows. As to how many reps, I only do 10 or more reps during warmup. From there on out it’s 5 reps per set or so, and at the end I do a few heavy singles at about 85-90% of PR.
- CryoLogic 9y agoThere have been a number of top level powerlifters in their 40's. Most of these studies don't study people with solid diet and training routines.
- noarchy 9y agoThis holds for bodybuilding, too, though that is admittedly a very subjective (appearance-based) sport compared to powerlifting where there are real numbers by which to compare everyone. Dexter Jackson placed 4th at this year's Mr. Olympia at age 47. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Jackson_(bodybuilder)#Contest_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Jackson_(bodybuilder)#C...
- 0xbear 9y agoThey all take PEDs though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 9y agoYou're misinterpreting the statement. It is obviously not claiming that muscle mass follows a specific trajectory regardless of all other factors. It is claiming that muscle mass follows a statistical trajectory holding other factors constant. It's as if someone said that a car coasting to a stop slows by roughly 1% of speed every second and you tried to refute this by pointing out that if you hit the accelerator it goes faster.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]