2009 Studies & Research Blog

One of the predominant reasons why people lose muscle mass is because they aren’t placing enough stimulus on the muscle tissue that the body senses it needs to maintain it. With aging and a decrease in physical activity, this starts to become more predominant and it’s not uncommon at all to see older adults slowly putting on body fat due to the reduction in metabolic rate that goes along with this lean muscle mass loss.

Therefore, the best way to offset this will be to participate in a regular resistance training workout that places the stimulus on the muscle tissue so it will maintain itself over the long run.

Just how much resistance training is needed though to provide this effect? Must you go into the gym 4 times a week to maintain your muscle mass or is there some wiggle room for those with busy schedules?

This is what researchers out of the Institute of Anatomy looked at recently when they assessed the different responses to eccentric and concentric training in older men and women.

They had a group of elderly men and women participate in one of three different training protocols for a twelve week period.  One was cognitive training, the second group took part in convention resistance training, and the third group was involved with eccentric ergometer training, each group dedicating two sessions each week.

After the twelve week period the subjects were tested for functional parameters of strength as well as body composition.

The results indicated that the relative thigh lean muscle mass increased with both eccentric training and conventional resistance training but not with those performing the cognitive training.

From these results then we can conclude the any type of exercise where there is an overloading stimulus on the muscle fibres will help promote muscle maintenance and these benefits can be seen when performed at minimum twice a week, making it a very reasonable time commitment to prevent the later age weight gain and strength loss.

Reference:

Breil, FA. Et al. (2009). Different response to eccentric and concentric training in older men and women. European Journal of Applied Physiology. June 20.