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Muscle building over 50 years old
Posted by: Sean
If you're over 50 then you should know that although your bodies daily testosterone production has been slowing down since you were 30, training to build muscle when you're over 50 years old becomes more important than when you were 20 or 30.
The reason why weight training is more important over 50 is that after that age individuals normally see an enormous and rather dramatic drop in their lean muscle. The bottom line is that weight training is vitally important over 50, even if you have never lifted weights on a regular basis before.
When you were younger, you were able to recover very quickly, as result you could handle longer gym sessions more frequently. When you,re over 50 you need 48 hours between workouts and you,ll also find that you cannot push with a high intensity for as long as you used to. It does NOT mean that you shouldn,t train.
An important study was done by sports science to try and establish whether training with weight at the age of 80 years old was beneficial. There were 22 subjects with an average age of 80. The study was done over 11 weeks and they got half the volunteers to only do negative work.
The eccentric or negative group don,t use as much energy but an eccentric movement still contracts the muscles which makes it such a good choice when dealing with the frail elderly who will always be at a higher risk of falling. The other positive group did traditional weight training movements the best they could, using an "easy" weight and a "difficult" weight.
The positive group in the study would do 10-15 reps with the easy weight and then the next time they trained would do 6-10 reps with a difficult weight. After the 11-week study, the data collected clearly demonstrated that doing negative work showed itself to increase the cross-sectional area of the micro fibers, improvements were shown in stair decent, general strength, balance and a decreased risk of falling.
In conclusion you should never think that it's too late to start training with weights. Increasing your muscular strength, your muscularity and your power needs a few smart training adjustments plus a good attitude, if it is approached correctly you'll be able to make a difference to the way you look and the way you feel.
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