It was during one of my regular workouts with my trainer, back in my 50s, when I noticed something. It was probably that I just dismissed it after all the previous sessions, but I had to acknowledge it now. Finally.
I’d been lifting weights in some form or another for most of my adult life. It was primarily to improve conditioning for cycling and rugby. Two sports that are never mentioned in the same training program. For good reason, too.
I knew my body well — its limits, its responses, its relationship with effort and recovery. But that morning, climbing a hill I’d climbed hundreds of times, something felt different. Not slower, exactly. Something in the quality of the effort. A sense that the engine was the same, but the chassis had shifted underneath it.
I mentioned it to a friend hosting me at a recent cycling camp last May, a former professional cyclist and Olympian who now also trains aging athletes in their sixties and seventies. She acknowledged without surprise. “You’re still riding like the cyclist you were 10 years ago,” she said. “But you’re not training like an aging athlete. At this age, the bike doesn’t give you everything you need.”
She was talking about muscle and specificity. And she was right.
That conversation started a re-education that’s still ongoing — now accelerated by the NASM work I’m doing on strength training and nutrition for older adults. What I’ve learned has changed how I train, and I think it should change how most people in their sixties and seventies think about their bodies, because the research here is both more alarming and more hopeful than the conversations most of us are having.
Let’s start with what’s happening to our bodies quietly, without us noticing it until it impacts us with a serious injury.
Beginning in your thirties, you lose roughly 3 to 5 percent of your muscle mass per decade. That sounds manageable until you understand what happens after 65, when the rate accelerates sharply.
Between your mid-sixties and mid-seventies, the average person loses a significant share of the functional muscle that keeps them mobile, metabolically healthy, and independent.
Researchers call it sarcopenia — from the Greek, meaning poverty of flesh — and it currently affects between 25 and 45 percent of seniors. It sounds like a deadly, exotic disease. The hard truth? It is far from exotic – but it can be deadly.
Here’s what makes sarcopenia insidious: it doesn’t announce itself. It arrives slowly, masked by other explanations. You’re tired because you’re getting older. You’re slower because of your joints. You’re less steady because of your balance. All of that may be true. But beneath it, quietly, the muscle that has been the physical foundation of your entire life is eroding — and most people don’t start paying attention until the consequences are difficult to reverse.
The consequences are serious. Loss of muscle mass is directly linked to a higher risk of falls and fractures, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and — ultimately — loss of independence.
A 2024 review of 36 studies found that maintaining muscle mass, strength, and balance is vital for preserving mobility, preventing falls and cognitive decline, and sustaining social engagement and quality of life. This isn’t fringe research. This is the clinical consensus, and it has been building quietly for decades.
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Eric Topol, cardiologist, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and author of Super Agers, has called exercise “the only thing we know that lowers our biological age.” The muscle that exercise grows and preserves is the mechanism through which that lowering happens.
Skeletal muscle is not just a tissue that moves your body. It is a metabolically active organ that performs critical functions throughout your system. It’s the primary site for glucose disposal, playing a central role in blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity. It produces signalling proteins called myokines that communicate with your brain, heart, and immune system. It serves as a reservoir of amino acids your body draws on during illness or injury.
Muscle is the physiological reserve that determines whether your final decade is one of function and independence or of progressive limitation.
Population studies around the world and in varied cultures support this framing with striking clarity. People who engage in regular muscle-strengthening activities have a 10 to 17 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality. A meta-analysis of 11 studies found a 21 percent reduction in all-cause mortality among those who performed resistance training regularly, rising to 40 percent lower when resistance training is combined with aerobic exercise.
These are not modest numbers. These are the effects we associate with pharmaceutical interventions, achieved through something available to almost everyone.
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So, what does this mean in practical terms for someone in their sixties or seventies?
The first point is that cardio, while genuinely valuable, is not sufficient on its own. Most people in this age group who exercise at all lean heavily toward walking, swimming, cycling, or other aerobic activities. These are excellent for cardiovascular health, but they are not effective at preserving or building muscle. The research is unambiguous on this: resistance training — working against a load, progressively and consistently — is the only intervention proven to slow sarcopenia and build the muscle mass that longevity requires.
The second point is that the way most older adults approach resistance training, when they do it at all, is often too conservative to produce the adaptations they need. Light weights and high repetitions have their place in rehabilitation and corrective exercise. But for muscle preservation and growth, research points to progressive overload — gradually increasing the challenge to the muscle over time — as the essential ingredient.
Your muscles don’t know how old you are. It responds to stimulus. If the stimulus is insufficient, the adaptation won’t occur.
The third point — and this is where my own training has shifted most noticeably — is that older adults need to pay particular attention to what researchers call anabolic resistance. As we age, our muscles become less responsive to the signals that trigger growth and repair. We need more protein, more stimulus, and more recovery time than we did at 40. Training smarter, not just harder, is no longer just sensible advice but genuinely necessary.
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I’ll tell you what this looks like for me, not as a prescription but as a data point from someone living through the same questions you are.
I now lift three times a week alongside my cycling. Not too heavy, but not reckless — I’m 69, not 35, and I have no interest in injuries that set me back. But heavy enough to push my body to adapt and build strength.
But I’m progressing with intention, focusing on compound movements that build functional strength: squats, deadlifts, pressing, and pulling. I’ve significantly increased my protein intake, which I’ll cover in the next nutrition piece. I’ve added a deliberate focus on balance and corrective work, which my courses have made me take much more seriously than before.
One year in, the results aren’t dramatic the way fitness transformations are usually sold, but they are obvious. I don’t think I look like a different person - although some friends would say otherwise. (Thank you!)
What I do notice is functional: the hill that felt like the Alps that morning now feels normal again. Or as close to normal as I can reasonably expect. Recovery from hard rides is faster. My body feels less like something I’m managing and more like something I’m training. That distinction, at 69, feels significant. It will feel like that for you, too.
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If you’re not currently doing resistance training, here is what I’d suggest considering — not as instruction, but as a starting point for a conversation with your doctor and whoever helps you train.
Start. Just start now.
Research consistently shows that it is never too late for resistance training to produce meaningful benefits. The amount of grey hair in my gym confirms it. Studies show significant improvements in muscle mass and strength in adults well into their eighties. The best time to start was ten years ago. The second-best time is this week.
Two to three sessions per week is the evidence-based minimum.
You don’t need to live in the gym. Research supports consistent, progressive resistance training two to three times a week for meaningful adaptation. More can be better, but consistency matters more than volume, especially at the start.
Work with a professional, at least initially.
Form matters enormously in resistance training, and poor form under heavy loads is how injuries happen. A qualified trainer — ideally one with experience working with older adults — is worth the investment, especially when you’re establishing the movement patterns that will underpin everything else.
Take protein seriously.
The current evidence suggests that adults over 65 need significantly more protein than the standard dietary guidelines recommend — between 1.2 and 1.5 grams per kilogram of body weight per day — to overcome anabolic resistance and support muscle repair. I’ll cover this in detail in the next post.
Measure what matters.
A DEXA scan gives you a baseline measurement of muscle mass and body composition that the weight scale can’t provide. If you want to track whether your training is working, knowing where you’re starting from is the only way to gauge where you’re going.
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Treat aging like it’s a sport. That means it has rules, it responds to training, and the way you prepare determines how well you perform when it counts.
Muscle is not a vanity project. It is not something you needed at 30 and can afford to let go of at 65. The evidence increasingly argues that it is the central physical asset of the second half of your life — the thing that keeps you independent, metabolically healthy, cognitively resilient, and capable of living the life you want to live.
The good news is that it responds. At any age, with the right stimulus and nutrition, the body can build and preserve muscle in ways that meaningfully alter the trajectory of how you age. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s what the research shows.
Next in The Long Ride: “Protein — The Most Important Number You’re Probably Getting Wrong.”
Are you currently doing resistance training? If not, what’s stopped you? I’d genuinely like to know — drop it in the comments.
Research & sources referenced in this piece
Attia, P. Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (2023). Harmony Books.
Topol, E. Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity (2025). Simon & Schuster.
Cannataro et al. (2022). Strength training in the elderly: A useful tool against sarcopenia. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.
Gustafsson & Ulfhake (2024). Aging skeletal muscles: mechanisms of age-related loss of strength and mass. International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
UT Southwestern Medical Center. Strength training over 60 prevents muscle loss from sarcopenia (2023).
Meta-analysis: 21% lower all-cause mortality with resistance training, 40% lower when combined with aerobic exercise. NMN.com longevity roundtable (2025).
Scoping review (2024): Effects of resistance training on sarcopenia risk. NIH/PubMed.
Protein recommendation: 1.2–1.5g/kg/day for adults over 65. gethealthspan.com (2025).
I’ve been keen to amp protein, but haven’t been as good at a resistance routine. Thanks for the nudge.