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One of my long term goals for myself is to be physically active until the end of my life. I don’t ever want to get to a point where I can no longer move my body. I accept that as I age I will likely need to change how I move my body and the intensity, frequency, and duration at which I do it, but the goal is to just keep moving!
Why do I have this goal?
The Importance of Aerobic Fitness and Muscle Mass
The reason why is because your aerobic fitness and your muscle mass are incredibly important for your long term health and independence when you get into older age. For example, if you let your VO2Max, a common measure of aerobic fitness, fall below 18 we can no longer perform the activities of daily living (Aerobic Fitness in a Population of Independently Living Men and Women Aged 55-86 Years, n.d.).
Then there is muscle mass.
If we let our muscle mass decline because of poor lifestyle practices and a lack of strength training we put ourselves at risk of no longer being able to live independently (because we are not strong enough) and we hinder our metabolism to the point where we open ourselves up to a vast majority of chronic diseases. In addition to being strong enough to do activities of daily life, strength training is the best way to make sure you maintain your bone mass. One of the most common causes of death in older individuals is breaking a bone.
Muscle mass and strong bones play into a very common scenario for older individuals. If you lose muscle mass as you age your risk of falling goes up. This is because your muscles become so deconditioned that you are no longer stable. When you trip over something on the floor when you are younger your muscles are conditioned enough to catch you before you fall. In addition if you don’t catch yourself and fall to the floor your bones are strong enough to withstand the fall.
When you age and you lose muscle mass and bone density, and you trip something on the floor your muscles are too weak to catch yourself and you are more likely to fall on the floor. And because your bone mass is low you are more likely to break a bone. You then end up in a hospital, with the potential for having surgery to fix the break. This exposes you to more risk because now you open yourself up to getting an infection or getting sick. In addition, you are less mobile which accelerates muscle and bone loss even more making the problem even worse. More information on the importance of bone mass can be found in this blog post.
The problem with muscle and bone mass as with VO2Max is that it declines with age and it becomes harder and harder to build additional muscle, bone, and aerobic fitness the older you get.
Here are some visual representations of what happens:
Bone Mass
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378512220302619
VO2Max
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29293447
Muscle Mass
Earlier in life it is easier to build muscle, bone, and aerobic fitness. The time to do this is generally before you are 40 years of age. In all three cases if you start with a higher amount of muscle, bone, and aerobic fitness the rate of decline in these values might be the same but because you start at a higher point you can keep yourself above the thresholds that impact your health later into life.
You can think of this kind of like how you save for retirement. If you save a little more money earlier in life the magic of time and compounding will take over and you will be left with a nice reserve in cash by the time you retire allowing you to maintain your lifestyle later into life.
When it comes to our health we can think of building muscle, bone, and aerobic fitness earlier in life as a way of saving for our health retirement.
But what happens if you find yourself older than 40 and have not done anything to save for your fitness retirement?
Luckily all hope is not lost.
If you were 40 and had not saved a penny for retirement you are certainly at a disadvantage, but it is still worth starting to save. You might have to save more aggressively and/or work longer than you would have if you started when you were 20 but every penny you save even from 40 on will help you once you get to your older age.
The same is true for your fitness retirement. As you age it will become harder to build muscle, bone, and aerobic fitness but it is still possible to make progress in these areas.
It’s Never Too Late to Start: Evidence from Research
A recent study illustrated how it is never too late to start improving your fitness (Heavy Resistance Training at Retirement Age Induces 4-Year Lasting Beneficial Effects in Muscle Strength: A Long-Term Follow-Up of an RCT, 2024).
In this study there were 451 older adults with an average age of 71, 60% of which were female. Researchers split these participants into 3 groups, a heavy resistance training group, a moderate resistance training group and a control group.
The moderate resistance training group exercised three times a week using body weight and resistance bands. Participants in this group did 3 sets of 10-18 reps at about 50-60% of the participants estimated one rep max for each exercise.
The heavy resistance training group also exercised three times per week. However participants in this group did 3 sets of 6-12 reps at about 70-80% of their estimated one rep max for each exercise using machines.
The control group did no formal exercise.
All of the participants followed this exercise routine for 1 year. After the 1 year time was over all participants stopped any kind of formal exercise.
Researchers measured markers of muscle strength and body composition both before and after the year-long training intervention.
Here is what they found:
- Leg strength increased in the high and moderate load training groups compared to the control group
- Handgrip strength and leg power were unchanged between groups, although handgrip strength declined across all groups compared to baseline.
- Lean body mass increased in the high load training and moderate load training groups compared to the control group
- Leg lean mass increased in the high load training group (but not the moderate load group) compared to the control group.
- Thigh cross-sectional area increased in the high load training group compared to the moderate load group and the control group, who experienced a 3.3% reduction in thigh cross sectional area during the study.
- Body fat percentage and visceral fat declined only in the high load training group.
For the most part, outside of handgrip strength, there were pretty positive results for both groups that did some kind of resistance training. It appears though that the heavy resistance training group fared a little bit better than the moderate resistance training group in some areas. The main take away though is that lean body mass increased in both high and moderate training groups when compared to the control group which did no exercise.
In layman’s terms, the 2 resistance training groups built muscle while the control group didn’t.
Why is this important?
These individuals who were on average 71 years old (!) not only didn’t lose muscle they gained muscle after 1 year of consistent strength training!
But what happened 4 years later when they were no longer consistently exercising?
Here is what the researchers found 4 years later:
- The heavy resistance training group maintained their leg strength compared to baseline over 4 years. The participants in the moderate load training group and the control group experienced declines in leg strength from baseline to year 4 — the reduction in strength was 3% in the moderate load training group and nearly 7% in the control group.
- Lower-body power output and handgrip strength declined in all of the group across the 4 year follow-up period. The decline in lower-body power was around 10 kg in the heavy load training group, 14 kg in the moderate load training group, and 16 kg in the control group. Handgrip strength declined by about 1 kg, 1.5 kg, and 3 kg in the heavy load, moderate load, and control groups, respectively.
- Visceral fat — the pro-inflammatory fat that wraps around organs and is associated with several diseases — did not change in the heavy load training and moderate load training groups over 4 years. However, in the control group, levels of visceral fat increase by 85 grams.
- Leg lean mass and thigh cross-sectional area declined in all groups from baseline to year 4.
- The heavy load training group maintained lean body mass from 47.5 kg at baseline to 47.3 kg at year 4; the moderate load training group experienced a reduction in lean body mass from 46.8 kg at baseline to 46.4 kg at year 4 (a 0.4 kg reduction); and the control group experienced a reduction in lean mass from 46.5 at baseline to 46.0 kg at year 4 (a 0.5 kg reduction).
Again the participants that strength trained during the 1 year intervention fared much better in the 4 year follow up. The crazy thing about these results was that the heavy resistance training group was able to maintain their leg strength and total lean body mass, even with no formal training for 4 years!
The main takeaway from this study is that moderate to high intensity resistance training is going to allow you to build muscle, even if you are at an advanced age! In addition, even if you start investing in your fitness retirement account later in life, that investment can continue to pay dividends without actually continuing to workout (as demonstrated in the high intensity strength training group).
Obviously the goal should be to continue to exercise consistently as long as you possibly can, but if for some reason you need to take an extended break from strength training the work you put in leading up to that will make you more resilient to the declines in strength we commonly see in older individuals.
What about aerobic fitness, can we also delay the decline of that part of our fitness in older age?
YES!
There is actually a lot of research in this area and is summed up nicely in a meta-analysis (Osness, n.d.) which evaluated 41 research papers on this topic. The meta-analysis included 2102 individuals with an average age of 60. After looking at all these research papers, the authors concluded that doing endurance exercise at 60-70% of VO2Max 3 days a week for 35-40 minutes at a time would result in a 16% INCREASE in VO2Max over the course of 16-20 weeks.
That might not seem like a huge increase, but consider this…
The authors also found that the control groups in these studies, which did not exercise, experienced a DECLINE of about 23.2% PER DECADE from the age of 61-85!
I don’t know about you but I would take the small increase over the massive decline any day of the week!
Unlike muscle mass and strength, aerobic fitness does not stick around after you stop training.
One study showed an average of a 20% decline in VO2Max after 12 weeks of no training (The Impact of Training on the Loss of Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Aging Masters Endurance Athletes, 2022). Males tend to see a sharper decline than females (but they also see a sharper increase in VO2Max from training than females).
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/11050
While aerobic fitness does not stick around very long it can come back quite quickly when you begin training again as the graph below illustrates. In fact, the study found that older athletes tend to gain back their aerobic fitness quicker than younger athletes.
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/11050
Implementing Your Fitness Retirement Plan
As always I want to provide you with some practical actionable information that we can take away from this research.
First and foremost your muscle strength and size as well as your aerobic fitness play a massive role in maintaining your health and independence well into old age. The problem we need to deal with is the decline in our fitness that will happen with each passing decade.
The best way to deal with this problem is to invest in your fitness retirement account!
To do this you need to strength train and do some form of cardiovascular exercise.
The earlier on in life you can begin working on your fitness the better. This is because it raises the amount of muscle, strength, and aerobic fitness you have and you can “bank” that fitness for when you reach older age.
Ideally once you reach older age you can at the very least maintain your fitness by continuing to exercise.
However if for some reason you have some poor genetics and your fitness declines even with exercise, or you are forced to take an extended period of time off from exercise, you have plenty of fitness in the bank so the decline in your fitness doesn’t impair your health and independence.
The second take away from the research we have reviewed in this post is that if you wait until you are older before starting to exercise YOU CAN STILL INCREASE YOUR FITNESS. You may not have enough banked away so that you can afford to take an extended break from exercise, but you can still prevent the decline in fitness and possibly even build up a bit of a fitness reserve!
That is pretty darn cool if you ask me!
So how do you start to work on your fitness retirement account?
You want to do 3 things:
- Get a fair amount of low level easy movement (think walking or an equivalent to walking)
- You want to do strength training 2-3 times a week. As the research shows, the more intense you can do this strength training without over-training or risking injury, the better in terms of building your fitness reserve.
- You want to do 2-3 days a week of low intensity cardio training (any modality you would like).
Of course this sounds easy but how do you implement it?
Good news for you is that I have already written detailed blog posts on how to implement a cardio and strength training routine which outlines exactly how to exercise including how frequently to exercise, intensity, duration, specific exercises, and exercise videos.
For the exact details on how to implement a cardio routine read this post.
For the exact details on how to implement a strength training routine read this post.
Your fitness retirement account is just as important or even more important than your financial retirement account. Think about it, if you don’t invest in your fitness retirement account and your health and independence decline you will end up spending all or your financial retirement account on trying to fix your health or even worse you pass away before you even get to enjoy your retirement! If you want to ensure that you are able to maintain your health and fitness across your lifespan, each week I put out actionable information to get there via my newsletter. To get all this information delivered directly to your inbox fill in your email in the form below.