This was a recent study between a group of 65-75 individuals, and a group of 85+year olds. To my knowledge, this is the first study Ive seen comparing "old" to "very old" people.
They all strength trained for 3 months, and they all followed the same program. 3 total body workouts per week, for 12 weeks in length.
While they all had different start points, and the 85 year old had less muscle mass at the beginning, their results were excellent.
Both groups made practically identical gains in strength and muscle mass when compared, with older group actually make greater strength and muscle gains by percentage (but accounting for their lower start point, the absolute results were similar).
The researchers noted,
"Prolonged resistance exercise training increases muscle mass, strength, and physical performance in the aging population, with no differences between 65–75 years and 85+ years older adults."
The results of this study align with the other research thats been done on elderly populations
-You can always build muscle and get stronger
-the effects of age are vastly overestimated
-people decay because of lifestyle, not because of they reached an arbitrary age number
Muscle mass is the holy grail for health. Train to build muscle and keep your joints functional, and you will avoid the "decay" that masses buy into as inevitable.
This is the premise of Longevity Program, which is designed for older individuals who want to age with Strength
Study #2-
You CAN "shape" a Muscle depending on the exercises you do
So this one requires some historical context.
One of the old time "broscience" beliefs was that certain exercises could selectively develop different sections of a muscle. To be clear, this did not mean that an exercise ONLY worked a small subsection of muscle to the exclusion of the rest of the muscle.
Rather, the thinking was that by training a muscle with different angles of exercise, and placing tension on certain regional areas of muscle tissue, this would lead both to overall growth, AND more development in that section
So for example, by doing say preacher curls with a full stretch, you could fully develop the lower portion of the biceps muscle, and by doing say incline DB curls, that would work outer bicep, and then by doing a concentration curl, that was more inner bicep.
I could give numerous examples for triceps, chest, quads, glutes, back muscles, etc.
This is why bodybuilders typically did multiple exercises for each muscle. Just doing squats wasnt enough, or just doing bench press, or only do pullups. You had to work the muscle from multiple angles.
The belief informed a great deal of bodybuilding training, but was it TRUE?
Over the years, the scientific community started to argue it was bullshit. Either the whole muscle grew equally, or it didnt grow at all.
This is called Homogenous Growth.
So long as you did compound movements and a basic isolation exercise, you got all the muscle growth you wanted. Isolation exercises themselves were probably wastes of time
Okay, but this seemed to run up against the anecdotal evidence.
Bodybuilders would constantly attest to only seeing growth in a certain area of muscle when they did certain movements
But maybe this was just N=1?
WHO WAS RIGHT??
The Bros Were Right.
It had been seen in scientific literature going back to the late 1980s that muscle growth was not perfectly uniform in the entire length of a muscle. Muscles are COMPLEX. The Architecture of a muscle is NOT like a metal cable where it is uniform length and thickness. If you look at your muscles, you can see they are a variety different shapes and their morphology is not simplistic 2-dimensional lines.
Beginning the late 2010s, research started to be done testing out this idea of "Regional Hypertrophy".
What was discovered? Not only was it real, many of the classic bro exercises that were purported to develop specific areas of the muscle were 100% accurate and in line with research findings
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In this study, women were divided into two groups, one doing incline curls, and one doing preacher curls.
They did the same amount of sets, and trained arms three times a week, doing 4 sets each workout. The study lasted 9 weeks.
At the end of 9 weeks, the muscle thickness differences were compared
-BOTH exercises led to relatively equal muscle growth, but
-The Preacher curls DID indeed lead to more "lower bicep" hypertrophy.
-The incline curls lead to "middle bicep growth" but not lower bicep growth
This is just one study of many that have come out the last 5 years showing that exercise range of motion and WHERE tension is placed on the muscle affects growth
To be clear, this does not mean you can change your underlying muscle structure. You cannot change the length of your tendons or muscle bellies, or their attachment points.
Study #3-Walking is Good for you. How much Walking? About 8,800 Steps a day
That walking is healthy for you should not require a master thesis. People who are physically active are always healthier in sedentary people. This is inarguable.
That said, this was a meta-analyis, meaning it was a summation of multiple studies. In total, it looked at data from over 111k individuals across 12 studies.
The aim of these studies was to determine a relationship between daily step count, and reduction in all cause mortality (death due to any cause).
At what point does walking STOP reducing all-cause mortality?
Per the meta-analysis, it concluded that at just 2.6k steps per day, there was already a reduction in mortality. The more you walked, the greater the benefits.
At 8,800 steps is where the reductions peaked.
This does not mean walking more is BAD (there are always people who make this odd binary inverse assumption).
Rather, it simply meant that per the meta-analysis perameters, the benefits did not keep increasing. People who walked 12,000 steps had the same reduction as people walking 10,000 steps, or 8,800 steps.
Be advised, there are other studies and analysis that show a continuing increase in benefit beyond 8.8k steps.
What does this tell us overall though?
People who walk a lot are HEALTHY.
8,800 steps is about 4.4, give or take a few tenths. Thats a healthy amount of walking. Aiming for 10,000 steps a day is a good goal. Even if you fall short, you're still reaping the rewards.
Whether your walking is done all at once or over the course of a day, it doesn't matter. Find ways to increase your daily step count. Whatever is practical and habitual, do that.
I like to listen to Dr. Peter Attia's podcast which focuses alot on exercise as you get older. The best part of this podcast is that he has top notch experts on. In the past few months, I have heard something that I did not know...the main reason older adults fall is because of loss of leg strength. One dr who is a orthopedic hip specialist said its the weakening of the hip flexors...which makes sense in that hip flexors lift your leg. The other guy, a kinesiologist, said fast twitch muscle fibers are much more susceptible to age and the result is that when you are older and you trip or lose your balance, you cannot move your leg/foot fast enough to catch yourself like you used to be able to do. Both of the explanations I think make sense. I always thought it was a balance issue. But now I am buying into the leg strength idea. So in your workouts, dont forget legs as an older person.