How to outrun Sarcopenia

  Resistance training provides the signal, nutrition supplies the materials, and recovery allows the body to adapt. RESISTANCE TRAINING The signal NUTRITION The materials RECOVERY The adaptation The best time to fight sarcopenia is before weakness makes the decisions Sarcopenia is often discussed as though it belongs to a distant and decrepit future: something involving frailty, walking frames and a version of ourselves we would rather not imagine. But the most useful time to act is much earlier—while we are still capable of building strength, improving fitness and entering later life with greater physical reserves. If you are in your fifties or sixties, you may already have noticed small changes. A heavy bag seems heavier than it used to. Muscle returns more slowly after a break. A day of gardening leaves a deeper impression. Perhaps you still walk, cycle or exercise and...

  Begin where you are. Progress when ready. The chair is a starting point—not a ceiling. Making Movement Accessible Chair-based exercise is not merely for very frail older adults. It can help you loosen up, regain confidence and prepare for more demanding strength and balance training. Chair exercises have acquired a rather unfortunate image. Search for them online and you may expect to find someone sitting politely in a floral armchair, lifting one ankle at a time while being congratulated for not spilling the tea. There is nothing wrong with gentle exercise when gentleness is what a person needs. But presenting chair-based exercise as something reserved for the extremely frail undersells it badly. A chair can make movement accessible to somebody rebuilding after serious illness. It can also help a reasonably able person in their sixties, seventies or beyond begin exercising before stiffness and preventable weakness become a crisis. It can provide a movement break during a sede...

  How can you tell whether exercise discomfort is a normal response to training, a reason to adapt the session, or a warning that you may be causing or aggravating an injury? Navigating the fine line between training soreness vs injury after 60 is one of the most critical skills you need to build a resilient body for longevity. There was a stage in my campaign against sarcopenia when nearly every part of my body appeared to have its own definition of progress. My muscles would report the familiar soreness of a useful workout. My heel would object to walking. A finger that I had originally hurt while getting into a car would complain whenever I gripped something. My proximal biceps tendon—or at least the region I suspected was the tendon—began lodging a more formal and persistent complaint. Meanwhile, my feet demonstrated that a man may be preparing for the Brooks Range of Alaska and still be defeated in Battersea Park by one English blister. The Department of Musculoskeleta...

The watch supplies the telemetry—but learning when to train, adapt or recover still requires human judgement. Can a Garmin help an older person recognise poor recovery - and how do we use its advice without becoming ruled by it? My mind still occasionally thinks it is 25. My muscles, on a good day, are prepared to claim 40. My tendons keep the official records and have my correct date of birth. Learning to navigate my Garmin recovery time over 60 taught me that this difference matters. When I began training seriously at 62, I was not trying to become a bodybuilder or pretend that age no longer existed. I wanted to resist sarcopenia - the gradual loss of muscle and strength that can accompany ageing - and build the sort of capable body that might one day carry me through Alaska's Brooks Range. The trouble was that I brought an old idea with me: if training was good, more training must be better. Three sessions a week? Sensible. Six or seven? Surely twice as sensible. Recovery was th...