Why People Think You Can’t Build Muscle Over 50 Naturally (They Can't Be More Wrong)

Statistics tell us we lose muscle by 3 to 8 percent every decade after 30. Our testosterone and growth hormone levels go down. We have an increased risk of diabetes and insulin insensitivity as we age.

On top of this, our bone mass declines and our joints get weaker, and we start to suffer from ailments like osteoarthritis. With all this working against us, how can anyone expect to build muscle over 50?

Let’s face it, if we can build muscle and continue to improve ourselves physically over 50, then why don’t we have Olympic athletes over that age?

Now I’m not denying ageing, it happens to all of us, but most of us have never trained like an Olympic athlete bring our bodies to their absolute peak physical condition. Whether that be muscular or cardiovascular fitness, something I want to make clear here is there’s a big difference between the statistics of ageing and optimal ageing.

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When we work to build muscle and strength, we’re not only improving how we look but also how we age, and this positively affects our body composition, joints, bones and hormones.

No matter what your age, you need to apply progressive overload to your workouts, gradually lifting heavier over time, but something those of us over 50 have to keep in mind and especially if we have sore joints or osteoarthritis, is that we might need to start out using lighter weights and training farther from failure.

To illustrate, in a study they had older adults with osteoarthritis train for eight weeks with 60% of their one-rep max doing only 8 repetitions that’s about 12 away from failure and yet at the end of the study they reduced the amount of pain they felt, increased physical function and muscle torque. All of this would allow them to train heavier in the future.

As we age, we can suffer from anabolic resistance, which blunts our body’s response to ingesting protein. A research paper published in, Frontiers in Nutrition states that protein intake should be increased closer to 1.2g per kg per day for older adults. This would be good for sedentary older ones, but for the hard-training ones over ’50, I’d recommend at least 1.72g

This paper adds an interesting finding that “resistance exercise, in particular, seems to DRASTICALLY INCREASE the dietary amino acid sensitivity of older muscle to protein ingestion.”

They go on to suggest having protein post-workout as “targeted exercise prior to Protein ingestion has been shown to enhance the dietary amino acid sensitivity of ageing muscle, and that is a clear fountain of youth for muscle.”

Insulin insensitivity is another thing that can negatively affect muscle protein metabolism. They took a group with an average age of 70 and had them walk on a treadmill for 45 minutes finding that this was enough to restore the anabolic response of muscle proteins to insulin.

Another study examined master athletes with an average age of 68 and found that “long-term exercise, decreased reaction time and increased VO two max, testosterone and growth hormone in elderly males.”

master athletes have an increased health span reducing the number of years spent weak and frail.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8503910_Serum_testosterone_growth_hormone_and_insulin-like_growth_factor-1_levels_mental_reaction_time_and_maximal_aerobic_exercise_in_sedentary_and_long-term_physically_trained_elderly_males

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24030238/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22563890/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131552/#:~:text=Anabolic%20resistance%20is%20defined%20by,as%20dietary%20protein%20and%20exercise

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17351147/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3606891/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8092084/