The guide

What happens to strength as you age, and how much comes back?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 202611 sources

Muscle shrinks by about half a percent a year in midlife and closer to 1% a year by 75, and strength falls two to five times faster than that. But strength comes back faster than anything else in the body. Frail 90-year-olds nearly tripled their leg strength in eight weeks of lifting. Start now, at any age.

Most people treat getting weaker as part of getting old, like gray hair, something to accept. And many think lifting at 70 is either risky or pointless. The studies say almost the opposite. The loss shows up in strength long before it shows in the mirror, and the oldest, frailest people in the trials more than doubled their strength in a couple of months.

How fast does it go?

A 2012 review pulled together the studies of aging muscle. In studies comparing people of different ages, muscle shrank by a median of 0.47% a year in men and 0.37% in women. Studies that followed the same people found it faster at 75, about 0.8 to 1% a year in men and 0.6 to 0.7% in women. Strength at 75 fell 3 to 4% a year in men and 2.5 to 3% in women. In studies that measured both in the same people, strength fell two to five times faster than muscle.

The Health, Aging and Body Composition Study measured 1,880 people in their 70s for three years. Leg strength fell 3.4% a year in white men, 4.1% in Black men, 2.6% in white women and 3.0% in Black women. Leg muscle fell about 1% a year, roughly a third as fast.

The legs go first. In 468 men and women scanned with MRI, muscle as a share of bodyweight started falling in early adulthood, and the drop in total muscle that began near 50 came mainly from the lower body. That’s the part of you that gets you out of chairs and up stairs.

Why does strength fall faster than muscle?

Strength depends on muscle, and also on the nerves that switch the fibers on and on how well each fiber pulls. In the Health ABC study, people who gained muscle over the three years still lost strength, and the researchers put the gap down to a loss of muscle quality. It’s the beginner’s story in reverse. A beginner gets stronger before the muscle grows, and an older adult gets weaker faster than the muscle shrinks. What strength is.

That’s also the hopeful part, since the nervous system side of strength is the fastest to train.

A picture from daily life

Getting out of a low chair takes the same strength at 80 as it does at 40. At 40 it might use a small part of what your legs can do. At 80, after decades of slow loss, it can take nearly all of it, and one day it takes a little more than you have.

Nothing dramatic happened that day. The margin just ran out. Lifting widens the margin again, and it’s never too late to do it.

How much comes back?

In 1990 Maria Fiatarone and her colleagues put ten frail nursing home residents, aged 90 give or take a year, on heavy leg training for eight weeks. The nine who finished gained an average of 174% in strength, their thigh muscle grew 9%, and they walked 48% faster on a heel-to-toe balance walk.

Four years later the team ran a bigger, randomized version in 100 frail residents, average age 87 and as old as 98. After 10 weeks, strength rose 113% in the people who trained, against 3% in those who didn’t, and stair-climbing power rose 28%.

Bones answer too. In the LIFTMOR trial, 101 women around 65 with low bone mass did supervised heavy lifting and jumping twice a week for eight months, 5 sets of 5 at more than 85% of their max. Their spine density rose 2.9% while the home-exercise group lost 1.2%, and they did better on every function test. How do you build stronger bones?

Balance and falls

More than one in four US adults 65 and older falls each year, and those falls lead to about 4.5 million emergency room visits a year. Nearly 319,000 older people are hospitalized for hip fractures each year. In a study of 1,702 adults aged 51 to 75, 5% of people aged 51 to 55 couldn’t stand on one foot for 10 seconds, and about 54% at 71 to 75 couldn’t. The US guideline asks older adults for activity that mixes balance training with aerobic and strength work.

The chair stand is the CDC’s quick check for leg strength after 60. Sit in a sturdy 17-inch chair against a wall, arms crossed, and count full stands in 30 seconds. A score under these is below average for the age, which the CDC counts as a fall risk.

The test timer counts it for you, and How strong am I? scores it with your other tests.

Starting after 60

1. Check with your doctor first if you have heart disease, high blood pressure or a diagnosed condition like osteoporosis.
2. Start with the same five moves, lighter: chair squats, glute bridges, counter push-ups, rows and a carry with grocery bags. The program.
3. Warm up longer, with a few easy sets of the first move.
4. Add weight the same way anyone does, in small steps once every set hits its reps.
5. Practice balance daily, standing on one foot next to a counter, first with your eyes open and later closed.
6. Skip one-rep max tests. Estimate your max from a normal set if you’re curious.

Isn’t heavy lifting dangerous at 70?