Starting to lift cast iron in retirement still works!

Age-related muscle wasting is not inevitable. As long as you lift a fair amount of cast iron! Details from Géraldine Zamansky.

Building muscle after retirement: yes, it’s possible. Géraldine Zamansky, journalist at the Health Magazine on France 5, shares with us this week some rather encouraging results.

franceinfo: Encouraging results from Danish research which mobilized “young people retired”?

Geraldine Zamansky: Yes, 128 Danes, with an average age of 71, actually managed to beat the odds. Their leg strength remained intact, four years after the start of an original challenge: doing one hour of intensive weight training, three times a week, in a gym for a year.

The rule: be exhausted at the end of the required number of repetitions of the same exercise. If they managed to do more: the weight lifted was increased. Legs, arms, abdominals, all parts of the body worked. Then, their progress was compared to another group, tasked with doing so-called moderate exercises, once in the hospital and twice at home. Without forgetting the third group who simply had to continue their usual physical activities.

And only the legs exposed to the “torture” machines preserved their strength?

Absolutely. However, the hopes of maintaining were at least as important for the “moderate” group, as Mads Bloch-Ibenfeldt, at the heart of this study from the Faculty of Medicine in Copenhagen, explained to me.

The idea was that they would have less trouble holding out for a year, and above all that they would continue afterwards. And Mads Bloch-Ibenfeldt really thought so when he saw the first, often very negative, reactions to the machines. But the emulation of the group and the sense of duty limited the abandonments. Some even increased their muscle mass in 12 months.

Is it this muscle mass that remained longer after intense efforts?

So on an overall level, yes, intense effort in the gym leaves a more muscular body four years later. But this is not the case for the legs, whose muscles lost approximately the same volume in all three groups. At equivalent size, the passage on the machines would therefore have improved, optimized, the functioning of the muscles.

However, this preserved strength reduces the risk of falls and associated mortality in the elderly. Because a fracture can then have dramatic consequences. So it’s never too late to work your muscles intensely, even at home. With water bottles as dumbbells, and some inexpensive accessories, for the legs for example. Don’t forget to talk to your doctor first.

And for those who can’t or don’t want to do it, another team from Copenhagen found that regular exercise throughout life also created more efficient, “younger” muscles at the age of 70. cellular. And of course, if possible, start without waiting for retirement…

The study