Aging Beliefs & Muscle Adaptations

Resource Roundup

What The Mind Believes, the Body
Embraces

Marc Middleton, Founder and CEO of Growing Bolder, stated in a keynote presentation to fitness professionals “the most important lifestyle determinate of how we age in not exercise or diet but our belief system. We anticipate the negative benchmarks of aging so much that we create them.” He reviewed a study done at Yale where they took a group of 80-yeard olds and gave them a baseline fitness test and divided them into two groups. For 6-months one group did exercise everyday the other group did no exercise but were exposed to positive images of aging. The non-exercisers had more improvement in physical abilities than the exercisers. This is evidence that we must exercise our belief system as well as the body. He makes the important point that aging is not a disease, it’s an opportunity.

Muscle Fiber Adaptations to Exercise

 Andy Galpin PhD did a study comparing the muscle fibers of twin men in their fifties. One was a competitive triathlete while the other was a non-exercising, sedentary truck driver. He examined the muscle fiber quality and physiology of the twins and found the muscle quality (the amount of fat inside the tissue) favored the non-exerciser and the non-exerciser was just as strong as the exerciser. The biggest difference in muscle was the composition of fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers helps us with high force and power activities like jumping and sprinting. They’re also need for speed and reaction time to catch ourselves from a fall. Slow twitch is required for activities of daily living and endurance activities. Fast twitch fibers will reduce with age unless we engage in high force activities. A muscle biopsy was done on the twins quad muscles and found the non-exerciser had about 50/50 fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers. The exerciser had about 95% slow twitch muscle fibers. This showed 1) that muscle fibers will adapt based on the type of exercise we engage in and 2) the limits to physical adaptation are boundless, given enough stress and training.

Resource to Stay Active

Get Down-Katy Bowman demonstrates three different exercises that concentrate on lowering our weight down which is when the muscles are lengthening and is a great way to build strength.

Inspiration

The Fountain of Youth YouTube channel is full of 3-5 minute profiles on Master’s Athletes. There’s plenty of examples of people in their 80’s and 90’s engaging sports and other physical activities.