[imoldfella]

"After the age of forty, all of us, even the athletic, lose about eight per cent of our muscle mass each decade, with a further fifteen-per-cent decline between the ages of seventy and eighty. "

This has not been my experience. I have added pretty substantial muscle mass between the ages of 48 and 55 with fairly conventional weight lifting and diet with no PED's. My back squat has gone from 185 to 385 (pounds)and my deadlift from 265 to 465. 40 seems way too early to start packing it in.

[jessriedel]

You're misinterpreting the statement. It is obviously not claiming that muscle mass follows a specific trajectory regardless of all other factors. It is claiming that muscle mass follows a statistical trajectory holding other factors constant.

It's as if someone said that a car coasting to a stop slows by roughly 1% of speed every second and you tried to refute this by pointing out that if you hit the accelerator it goes faster.

[bduerst]

This metric is without targeted anaerobic exercise like weightlifting. Decreases in hormones and neurotransmitters result in the body maintaining less muscle mass, even with aerobic exercise.

[nscalf]

As far as I know, there really isn't too much risk associated with hormone replacement therapy. If you add that into the mix, I'd be surprised to see any significant shifts over the human lifespan.

[orbitur]

Doesn't your body produce even less if you supplement, leading to problems if you quit?

[nscalf]

So as far as I understand, the answer to that is really "it depends". I'm not a doctor, I just find this stuff interesting. If you do it properly, I think you can supplement things like testosterone in a sustainable way, you'll have to cycle on and off the drugs to prevent long term damage to your body's ability to produce endogenous hormones, and then you'll take things that decrease side effects of the doping.

For example, a lot of fighters get caught taking drugs that decrease the estrogen production in the body, rather than actually getting caught taking steroids. Leagues ban steroids AND things that are used in coordination with steroids to increase the ability to enforce the steroid ban.

Now, I would argue that even if it does cause a long term dependency, it should be viewed, for the average person, the same way heart pressure medication is viewed. You have a medical condition, and this is a prescription you'll take for the rest of your life, but it will make you live a longer, healthier life.

[aqme28]

Without changing your lifting regimen? I find that hard to believe.

[imoldfella]

No, I _started_ lifting seriously at 48. I was objecting to the observation that loss of muscle was inevitable after 40 "even the athletic". Its not. That doesn't address the value or danger of GW501516 since I didn't use.

Most of the people using this drug are using it with more serious exercise than I'm doing. In practice its being used as an exercise supplement, not replacement.

[beat]

I'm assuming he means that's when he started with the weight training.

I'm 52, and recently started a strength/interval training regimen. In just a few weeks, I've increased my resistance loads 25-50%, and I'm losing a steady 1.5 pounds per week or so without a drastic diet change. It's a lot easier to control my eating now, too.

[mlevental]

2x improvement in 7 years? there's nothing unbelievable about that?

[berdon]

2x improvement just depends on where you start in relation to where you have been. If you haven't lifted legs heavily for a while you'll have to start lower but you'll quickly regain that lost grown. Well, you'll regain the lost ground faster than you'll go up past your old max.

[0xbear]

By definition, to lift heavier weight one has to change their lifting regimen.

[beat]

The regimen isn't really the amount of weight involved. It's how often you do it, how many reps, etc. For example, I'm doing interval training - something like, say, 10 chest presses, 10 lateral pulls, 30 seconds of crunches, and repeat this cycle three times. Then go to the next cycle, which might be something like incline pushups, bicep curls, and squats, again 3x.

If I were to change to, say, 5 reps at maximum weight just one time(heavy strength train), that would be a change in regimen.

[0xbear]

That’s not a lifting regimen. You don’t need crunches if you’re doing heavy squats or deadlifts. You don’t need bicep curls at all. And chest press must be balanced with barbell rows. As to how many reps, I only do 10 or more reps during warmup. From there on out it’s 5 reps per set or so, and at the end I do a few heavy singles at about 85-90% of PR.

[glangdale]

That is a lifting regimen; it's just not your lifting regimen. While mine has generally been more like what you're talking about, there's nothing wrong with people doing that kind of interval training.

Curls and crunches often give normal people better aesthetics than they had before. Some people want a 4/5/6 bench/squat/dead, other people want to look slightly better at the beach without utterly killing themselves in the gym. I know a couple order of magnitude more people with good aesthetics who control their diet and do a relatively candy-ass workout vs those rare powerlifting dudes who never do any ab work yet have abs visible through their squat suits.

[beat]

I'm doing barbell rows as well. I typically do four sets of three different exercises each (plus warmup and cooldown), so I'll do 12 different exercises over the course of a workout, and what those 12 are vary somewhat week to week. It's typically about 2/3 weights, 1/3 bodyweight exercises.

It's lifting, it's a regimen, so it's a lifting regimen. And it's been very effective at quickly adding strength, endurance, and flexibility to my initially bad starting position.

Don't assume your way of doing things is the only way to do things.

[yathern]

Congrats on the gains! Though of course you are just an anecdote. But I'm curious how much of this muscle mass loss is due to biological changes vs lifestyle changes.

[chrisseaton]

Well it does say 'all of us', so a single anecdote does disprove it. I think the original commentator was pointing out the sloppy writing.

[matt4077]

Yeah. The article's sentence also fails to account for people dying, who lose much more than 8% of muscle mass, and really stupid robots reading the article, who lose none of their muscle mass, but will have trouble understanding that, sometimes, language is ambiguous and requires a modicum of contextual reasoning, or else every sentence would require dozens of qualifications and would read like a regulation on insurance law.

[jaggederest]

"There may exist at least one person who may have lost muscle mass over time."

[stevenwoo]

I think my exercise and physiology textbook stated an age related decline in muscle mass happens in everyone after about 40 without a concerted program of strength training to stave it off.

[imoldfella]

That certainly sounds more credible. I encourage all the HN'ers north of 40 to try weightlifting. We have members older than myself seeing good results.

[CryoLogic]

There have been a number of top level powerlifters in their 40's. Most of these studies don't study people with solid diet and training routines.

[noarchy]

This holds for bodybuilding, too, though that is admittedly a very subjective (appearance-based) sport compared to powerlifting where there are real numbers by which to compare everyone. Dexter Jackson placed 4th at this year's Mr. Olympia at age 47.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Jackson_(bodybuilder)#C...

[0xbear]

They all take PEDs though.