HOW TO BUILD MUSCLES
I never had much muscle, but at 71 I want to stay fit. So I started doing pushups and crunches twice a day four times a week to try to rebuild my muscles. I have managed 40 each workout. But I notice that after a little initial improvement, my muscles get no bigger. I know that muscle cells stop dividing around age 27. I know that branched chain amino acid supplements, and eating enough protein, enhance muscle growth. Does anyone have any other advice how to build muscle?
RESPONSE 1: I have a book called Younger Next Year. I highly recommend it as a basis to plan your exercise routine; it is aimed at people our age. In general they suggest you do aerobics 3-4 days a week and muscle building 2-3 days a week, with 1 day a week off. 45 minutes each session. The muscle building sessions should not be done on consecutive days because in order to build muscle you have to damage it and then you need to let it heal before you damage it again. In general I understand you have to lift weights (or whatever) until your muscles burn. If they don’t burn you haven’t pushed far enough; if you don’t damage them a little (by making them burn) you won’t build muscle. From what I have read you get the most lifespan benefit from 40 minutes of exercise a day; if you do more than an hour you will be shortening your lifespan instead of extending it!
A few interesting quotes from my notes:
p. 104 the real benefit of exercise is seen after months & years of regular exercise
p 157 doing reps fast is bad
p 158 gain muscle fast, but joints take a couple mouth
p 158 so do higher reps (20) with lighter weights
p 158 free weights are better than machines
p 159 eventually need to do heavy weights, enough weight to failure @10 reps
p 159 need 2 days/week of weights for maintenance, 3 days/week for gain
p 162 joints take a couple months to heal with weight training
p 171 have to get to the point of muscle fatigue with weights (eg 3x 10 reps) to be sure you have used your entire muscle not just a percentage of the muscle
p 172 strength training will not stop muscle cell loss [in box] but muscle cell itself can grow and offset loss
p 173 Because you need to damage your muscles to stimulate growth and repair only do strength every other day maximum (you need to take a day between to allow for healing).
p 176 Supplements, even steroids, do not help average person.
RESP0NSE 2: Hi Roc, to build muscle you need to get Free Testosterone value up to mid range or more. Protein intake about 1gm per pound or more divided into 8 sessions. If 160 pounds then intake is 20 gm 8 x/day. More than 20-25 gm protein at one session is hard to absorb. Protein drinks using whey or Carnivor (beef) protein has highest biological value ( N2 retention= muscle retention) Amino acids waste of money if using high quality protein supplements. Add Creatine monohydrate (CMH) 2.5 gm /day.
RESPONSE 3: Strength training in nursing homes
RESPONSE 4: The very best thing would be to find a qualified trainer. But given the COVID19 situation, you’ll probably have to work out at home. The danger with this is that you might do exercises wrong and get injured. For optimal physical fitness, you need to train these criteria: 1. Strength 2. Endurance 3. Reaction 4. Balance 5. Flexibility
You can train (1) without (2) and (3), but if you work out to gain (1) without also working on (4) and (5), it is almost certain you will get inured sooner or later. So, I would highly recommend some flexibility and balance training in addition to strength training. Yoga, simple gymnastics or Tai Chi is perhaps something you could consider. There are online classes (although obviously, this is not ideal, because there is no instructor to correct you).
Muscles build by resistance training. There are a couple of key aspects: Train regularly. Don’t let more than 48 hours pass between workouts at the very maximum, or it is practically useless. Secondly, aim for increase the resistance, not the number of repetitions. In other words, you don’t increase muscle strength very much if you increase the number of pushups. You get much better results if you lay on a weight bench and bench press weights above your chest – keeping the repetitions steady (more or less) but increasing the weights.
RESPONSE 4: Follistatin gene therapy could be your answer Roc. Have you checked testosterone and gh levels? At your age I would suggest weight lifting exercises with comfortable weights and giving next day a rest to the muscles worked. Raising Klotho levels and taking melotonin if you arent may help.
RESPONSE 5: Have you tried the slow burn technique? For example, you wouldn’t do 40 reps, but perhaps 10, taking the muscles to exhaustion by moving very slowly. It is easy to see using weights (taking a weight 80% of the heaviest weight you can lift once) but can be applied equally to pushups and chin ups; squats may be less appropriate without weights. I don’t do crunches any more, but planks instead and try for 2 minutes; again, it doesn’t lend itself to the slow burn, but after 60 seconds the ‘burn’ is obvious. At the best of times, this routine is once a week, and the other two club sessions are taken up with the recumbent bike, quick turns on the machines with low weights, and my favourite, the all body exercise, a couple of kilometers on the rowing machine. (Oh yes, and stretches. Lots of them)
RESPONSE 6: you might want to look at Ginseng.
As they point out “Rg1 supplementation effectively eliminates senescent
cells in exercising human skeletal muscle and improves high-intensity
endurance performance.” “Ginsenoside Rg1 supplementation clears senescence-associated β-galactosidase in exercising human skeletal muscle.
Yes, get young again, that’s my plan. The same stimuli that cause muscle stem cells (satellite cells), to activate and produce new, or add to old, muscle fibers at old age signal non-responsive satellite cells or cause them to produce non-contractile fibers instead of muscle fiber. The attached paper gives some possibilities for restarting, basically with antioxidant therapy. Changes in Redox Signaling in the Skeletal Muscle with Aging Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity Volume 2019, Article ID 4617801, 12 pages
