7 Ways to Reverse Muscle Loss with Age!

the rate at which human beings lose muscle mass with age are absolutely terrifying but luckily there are ways to reverse it hi everybody my name is Will Harlow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT physio in Farnam and today I'm going to be revealing the seven ways that you can reverse natural muscle loss that occurs with age now before we dive into the content of the video if you haven't already please hit like on the video and subscribe to the channel because then you'll be the first to hear about our new videos when they come out and if you're finding videos like these useful then please consider sharing them with a friend or a family member who might benefit because organic growth is the only way we grow this channel so thank you very much if you share it now that that's all been said let's talk about muscle loss with age and the figures are absolutely terrifying so the truth is and this has been proven in studies over time they're on average per decade of life after the age of 30 humans tend to lose between three and eight percent of their total muscle mass now that is enormous imagine if you lost eight percent of your muscle mass from the ages of 30 to 40 then another eight percent from 40 to 50 then another eight percent from 50 to 60 it wouldn't be long until you had almost nothing left and the problem with this is that that rate accelerates even faster after the age of 60. and most of the people I treat are 50 plus and the research shows that on average every single year most people over the age of 60 lose about one percent of their total muscle mass so it doesn't take long before that really starts to compound and their muscle mass becomes significantly less than they need it to be so why is all of this a problem well having low muscle mass has been shown to increase the risk of Falls increase the risk of fractures decrease quality of life cause higher morbidity from other health problems and even be a leading predictor of early death so losing muscle mass is a very bad thing it's something we should try to reverse if we can and thankfully there are some excellent ways to reverse it now it was once believed that oh we're just going to all lose muscle mass as we get older there's nothing you can do to avoid it but this is actually Incorrect and there are many things you can put into place starting today that will maintain and even reverse your muscle mass loss so that you'll maintain muscle mass and be stronger fitter and healthier as a result it's worth also saying that people with lower muscle mass tend to suffer from more painful problems so a lot of these strategies I put into place with my patients if they've got knee pain back pain hip pain whatever the problem may be we're always talking about these methods in clinic because they tend to help lots and lots of painful problems as well as just maintaining muscle mass so let's have a look at the seven things you can do to reverse muscle loss with age so the first and best way to reverse muscle loss with age is to engage in resistance training now resistance training just means moving against resistance the resistance could be a weight like a dumbbell the resistance could be your body weight like if you were doing a press up or a sit to stand from the chair but you have to be doing something that is hard work for your muscles and pushes against some kind of external Force this doesn't mean you need to rush out and join a gym although that would be a good option there are lots and lots of things you can do at home I have other videos on my channel which show the best body weight exercises to build up your legs and your arms as well you can find that if you browse my channel but basically it's just about doing something regularly it doesn't need to be a full hour every day sometimes I will give people just 10 minutes a day of work to do and that is enough to combat the effects of Aging some of my favorite exercises are the squat and the sit to stand the press-up is brilliant you can use the bench press or the dumbbell press in the gym to keep your upper body as well overhead presses are excellent picking things up from the floor like a deadlift is also really good and then you can have single leg movements too like lunges which work one side of the body more than the other and improve your balance at the same time there are hundreds of different things you can do but the key is to find something that you enjoy something that doesn't hurt something that makes you feel tired when you finish doing a set and to do it consistently so those are the main things to do when it comes to resistance training if you're not sure I would recommend getting some personal advice from a physiotherapist who can put a program together for you to help you maintain that muscle mass now the key here when you're doing resistance training is that the exercises should make you feel tired by the end of the set we tend to work in repetition ranges somewhere between five in a row up to 20 in a row when you start to do more than 20 you're working more your endurance and if you're doing less than five then if you're doing it unsupervised there is a slightly higher risk of injury so between 5 and 20 in a row works well and by the end of that set so when you hit your five six seven eight nine ten repetitions in a row it should feel tired as if you would struggle to do many more we usually recommend a few sets of each of those exercises and to do at least something resistance based every single day that is a recipe for success in maintaining muscle mass now the second way to reverse muscle loss with age is to choose compound exercises so this is building on the point of resistance training and what I'm going to do now is explain one exercise which is okay but not that great and then an excellent exercise which takes exactly the same time as each other but one will give you a lot more bang for your buck so the first exercise I'm going to describe and this is one that we don't necessarily recommend for maintaining muscle mass is an isolation exercise called the bicep curl and no doubt you will have seen people in the gym doing these they typically hold a dumbbell and they bend their arm up and then let it down like this and it works this muscle here now there's nothing wrong with this exercise but the problem with this exercise is exactly that it only works this one muscle so when you do this exercise you're isolating the bicep and it's working just this one bicep here and then a couple of other little muscles around the the elbow but other than that you're not really getting much bang for your butt it takes just as much time as doing any other exercise but you're not getting a huge amount out of it so we avoid isolation exercises for most people and instead of that we guide people to take compound exercises instead so an example of the compound exercise would be the squat and a squat would be either with your body weight when you're just coming up like this and then squatting down you can do it from a chair or if you're feeling like you're a bit stronger you can put a weight on your back and you can squat down like that if you're in a gym and the great thing about the squash is it doesn't just work one muscle group it works three or four muscle groups it works the muscles in your hips that help you drive up and forward it works the other muscles in your hips that keep your pelvis level it works your thigh muscles so your quads and it even works some of the muscles in the hamstring and even down into the calf and the foot as well so we call this a compound exercise because it involves two or three different joints all at the same time and all the muscles included too so if you just choose the squat you can have a great workout in just 10 minutes by doing four or five sets of squats and if you were just doing four or five sets of bicep curl yeah you would maintain your muscle mass here but nothing would happen at the rest of the body whereas with the squat you're hitting the whole lower half of your body in the same time so if you're choosing exercises to maintain muscle mass always choose a compound exercise rather than an isolation exercise another example of a great compound exercise would be a press up so press up on the wall or on the floor which uses your shoulders your chest and your arms so most of your upper body and the core as well the overhead press is another one and the deadlift picking things up from the floor so those are great options to choose and not avoid the isolation exercises you just don't get quite as much out of them and choose a compound exercise instead the third way to reverse muscle loss with age is to do lots of weight bearing exercise now weight-bearing exercise doesn't need to fall into the same category as your resistance exercise it could just include walking it could include hiking could include running things like that all involve weight-bearing and being on your feet and bearing weight through your limbs so why is that important and why is that better for maintaining your muscle mass than things like cycling well the reason it's a bit better than things like cycling for maintaining muscle mass is because you're using more of your muscles because you're using your upper body as well and you're also taking your entire body weight through the muscles of the lower limb every time you take a step the other good thing about it is that it also maintains your bone mass as well so when we're walking it sends a signal to the bones that we need as much density in those bones as possible to Bear our weight and we don't get that same signal from things like cycling I'm not saying cycling is bad but walking is definitely better in later life from maintaining and building muscle mass so I would recommend everyone tries to get at least five to ten thousand steps a day if they can it's a great way to send a signal to your body to maintain as much muscle mass as possible now the fourth way to reverse muscle loss with age is to get enough protein now protein is a macronutrient that is included in our diets we have three major macronutrients you've got fat carbohydrate and protein and we can think of fat and carbohydrates simply as the energy sources and protein instead of providing energy what it does is provides building blocks for your muscles so one of the main reasons that people lose too much muscle mass as they get older is because they're not eating enough protein and if you don't eat enough protein in your diet your body still needs the protein so what it will do is it will break down your muscle mass in order to get it so protein is absolutely vital if we don't have enough protein the body says well we can't afford to keep these expensive muscle tissues anymore so we'll start stripping away the protein from the muscles so the muscles get smaller and weaker and we get weaker as a result now the guidelines from the government usually recommend that most people eat about one gram per kilogram of body weight per day of protein but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the optimal range in many of the studies that I've been reading about it looks like this may well be an under prescription for most people who want to maintain muscle mass I would recommend people look more towards the range of 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day because that seems to be the more accepted range for building and maintaining muscle now of course that isn't going to work for everyone because some people have things like kidney issues that mean they can't safely eat as much protein so always check with your doctor before and making any radical changes to your diet but having availability of protein in the body is absolutely critical to maintain your muscle mass if you do all the resistance training in the world but you don't eat enough protein quite simply you still won't maintain or build muscle mass it will still decrease because your body simply doesn't have the building blocks so having enough protein is vital and you can find protein in things like meat chicken fish eggs nuts and lots of different sources so however you put your diet together make sure you're prioritizing protein it's best to take in your protein spread across the day so spread over a few meals rather than a big protein s meal all in one go typically three or four servings a day and a total of 1.5 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight tends to work best for building and maintaining now the fifth way to reverse muscle loss with age is to take up hobbies in retirement now this is more of a lifestyle tip because it's something I've spotted a lot in the clinic I treat a lot of people who are just coming into retirement so they're just finishing work and moving into that next phase of life and a lot of them have spent a lot of time throughout their life working they're very dedicated to their jobs and then they suddenly come to a stop and life is completely different and they don't know what to do with their spare time they don't know how to fill it maybe they are more socially active but over time they find that they're not moving around as much because their work was something that kept them going kept them out the house it got them moving it got them challenging their brain and their body and now they've lost out on that so it's very very important that you take up something in retirement that's going to replace your lost efforts in work if you had a desk based job this is not as important but many of my clients have physical jobs and if you imagine that you've lost out on all of that physical exercise when you stop work it's not going to do you any favors just sitting on the couch so you need to get something into your life to replace that lost exercise this tip really applies for anyone who stops playing a sport or stops a hobby we need to have something that takes its place if we want to maintain muscle mass so have a look at your life have a think about what you enjoy doing pick something that you can do consistently that doesn't feel like a chore that's going to get you active it's going to get you up on your feet and get you moving and that's an excellent way to clock extra steps to clock extra resistance work and to maintain muscle mass now the sixth way to reverse muscle loss with age is to choose the stairs this is such a simple tip this is something that many people always choose the opposite of they take the escalator or they take the lift if there's an option there but if you make this one simple change when you're out and about and always use the stairs you're going to maintain a lot more muscle mass in your legs now when we have clients who go from a house to a bungalow there is a a phenomenon we call Bungalow legs we see it a lot and that's in the first year that those people make that change they tend to get a lot weaker in their legs and they're at a higher risk of Falls and other injuries as a result just because they lost those 10 or 11 trips up and down the stairs every day so make sure if you have the choice to either take the stairs or the lift you always opt for the stairs it might feel like it's more effort at the time and it is that's also the point because it's going to send a signal to your legs that you still need those muscles and it will maintain them as a result and then the seventh tip I've got for you for reversing muscle loss with age is to get painful problems sorted fast now the reason we say this is because painful problems often start as a niggle and people often think well it's a bit niggly today my knee so what I'm going to do is I'm not going to do my normal walk so take a few days off and then the niggle doesn't get better it gets a bit worse they think well I'm going to rest a bit further and then this becomes a vicious circle because the rest makes the muscles weaker which means that there's more pressure on the knee which means that the knee becomes more painful which means that the person takes more rest now you can replace the word knee with ankle hip back neck whatever it may be I see this pattern all the time and it's people who they try and tolerate a problem for a while and then when the nickel becomes a little bit more than a niggle they stop doing their normal exercise and then that goes on for protracted periods of time and then often I'll see people in the clinic who suffered for one year two year five years before they've got any advice on their problem it's just been getting worse and worse and they've in that mean in the meantime they've missed out on tons of exercise as a result and their muscle loss rate has increased dramatically as a result so to combat that I would say if you've had a painful problem that's been there for longer than a couple of weeks it's always best to get some advice on it even if the pain goes away on its own quite often the underlying problem that caused it in the first place is still there so it's likely to come back so for that reason it's always best to get advice even if it's just one session to get something checked out to get it looked at and then to stop it from happening again in the future if you can avoid injuries if you can avoid niggles then you're going to be moving a lot more which is going to maintain your muscle mass the people who keep the most muscle mass on their bodies are quite simply the ones who avoid the most injuries quite often because if you're injured you can't do as much resistance training you can't do as much walking and you will lose muscle quicker as a result so don't let it get so bad that you can't exercise at all put something into place as quickly as you can to get the problem sorted and you'll maintain more muscle mass as a result so those are all of the tips for how to reverse muscle loss with age I hope you found this useful if you have please leave me a comment below and if you want to get more from me you can pick up a copy of my book on Amazon it's called thriving Beyond 50 and it will give you loads more tips tricks and strategies for remaining remaining healthy in your 50s and Beyond anyway that's all I've got for you today I appreciate your time in watching this video and I look forward to speaking to you on the next one thank you

Channel: HT Physio – Over-Fifties Specialist Physio

Views: 1,882,881

Keywords: Farnham, Surrey, Physio, Physiotherapy, Knee Pain, Health, Exercise, Wellness, senior health, Over fifty, falls, Exercises, balance, family friendly, physicaltherapyvideo, famouspt, bob schrupp, brad heineck, famous physical therapists, physical therapy, Bob and Brad, balance exercises, how to improve balance, balance workout, balance exercises for seniors, physical exercise (interest), balance for seniors, 60+, senior citizen, over fifty, prevent falls, sarcopenia, muscle loss, ageing

Id: dMQbzlBr2VM

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023