Muscle Is More Than Strength: Why Building Muscle Matters as You Age
Most people think about muscle in one of two ways.
It either makes you stronger or changes how your body looks.
Both are true.
But neither is the biggest reason I want my clients building and maintaining muscle as they get older.
Muscle is physical reserve.
It's capacity sitting in the bank for whatever life asks your body to do next.
And that's why I often think of building muscle as one of the best insurance policies you can get for your future physical independence.
You hope you never need all of it.
But you build it anyway.
Because life has a funny way of making withdrawals when you aren't expecting them.
You Don't Buy Insurance After the Accident
We buy insurance before something goes wrong.
Not because we're planning on crashing the car tomorrow, but because we understand that unexpected things happen.
I think about muscle in much the same way.
You don't wait until you're 75 and struggling to get off the floor to decide strength might be important.
You don't wait until after surgery to wish you'd entered it stronger.
You don't wait until an injury sidelines you to wish you had more physical capacity in reserve.
You build it beforehand.
That doesn't guarantee nothing bad will happen.
It means that when something does happen, you're starting from a different place.
Muscle Is Your Physical Reserve
Think about the physical demands of everyday life.
Getting out of a chair.
Carrying groceries.
Picking something up from the floor.
Climbing stairs.
Putting luggage into an overhead compartment.
Hiking.
Skiing.
Playing with your kids or grandkids.
Those things all require some amount of physical capacity.
Now imagine the difference between having just enough capacity to accomplish them and having considerably more than you need.
That's reserve.
If everyday life requires 50 units of capacity and you've built 100, you have some room to work with.
If everyday life requires 50 and you only have 55, there isn't much margin.
The numbers are obviously imaginary.
The principle isn't.
I don't want my clients building just enough strength for the life they're living today.
I want them building more than they currently need.
Because we don't know exactly what their body is going to be asked to handle tomorrow.
Life Will Make Withdrawals
Aging itself changes the equation.
But aging isn't the only thing that can reduce physical capacity.
You get sick.
You have surgery.
You get injured.
Work gets crazy and training takes a back seat.
You travel for a month.
You spend weeks caring for someone else.
You have a period when your nutrition isn't great or you're not sleeping well.
Life happens.
And sometimes those periods result in losing some muscle, strength, conditioning or overall capacity.
That's why I like thinking of training as making deposits into a physical bank account.
Every productive workout is a deposit.
Every pound of useful muscle you build is a deposit.
Every improvement in strength is a deposit.
And eventually, life is probably going to make some withdrawals.
I'd rather have something in the account when it does.
I Got to Test This Theory Myself
Earlier this year, this stopped being just something I tell my clients.
At 44 years old, I suffered a complete Grade 3 tear of the MCL in my right knee.
I've spent years consistently strength training, and I track my body composition with an InBody scan about every four months as one way of monitoring how my training, nutrition and lifestyle practices are working.
I generally maintain somewhere between 110 and 115 pounds of skeletal muscle mass.
Then I hurt my knee.
And the injury didn't particularly care how consistent I'd been.
I met with an orthopedic surgeon expecting that surgery might be part of the conversation.
After evaluating the injury, he explained that the MCL has a relatively good capacity to heal compared with some of the other major ligaments in the knee, and he didn't believe surgery would improve my outcome.
His advice to me was essentially:
“Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.”
So I did.
My Recovery Didn't Start When I Got Hurt
This is the part of the story that matters most to me.
I didn't suddenly decide that sleep was important after tearing my MCL.
I didn't suddenly start thinking about nutrition.
I didn't discover strength training because I was injured.
Those things were already part of my life.
I consistently go to bed somewhere between 8 and 9 p.m.
I prioritize healthy food and hydration.
I strength train every week.
I pay attention to recovery.
I value healthy relationships and try to manage the other stresses in my life.
During my recovery, I continued those practices, worked with my medical team, incorporated regenerative and supportive therapies available through RHMC, kept moving appropriately and progressively rebuilt the capacity of my knee through specialized strength training.
But the recovery didn't begin the day I injured myself.
In a very real sense, I had been preparing for it for years.
Every workout was a deposit.
Every pound of muscle was a deposit.
Every good night's sleep was a deposit.
Every decent meal was a deposit.
Every time I trained consistently rather than disappearing for six months was another deposit.
Then life made a withdrawal.
Fortunately, there was something in the account.
Muscle Isn't the Whole Insurance Policy
I want to be careful here.
I'm not suggesting that having more muscle makes you injury-proof.
It doesn't.
I'm living proof that strong people still get hurt.
And I'm not saying muscle alone explains how someone will recover from an injury, illness or surgery.
It doesn't.
Your overall health matters.
Nutrition matters.
Sleep matters.
Cardiovascular fitness matters.
Movement matters.
Stress matters.
Your medical care matters.
The nature and severity of the injury obviously matter.
Muscle is one piece of a much larger picture.
But it's a piece that we can deliberately build.
And that's incredibly valuable.
Strength and Muscle Aren't Exactly the Same Thing
We often use the words interchangeably, but they're not identical.
Muscle is tissue. Strength is an ability.
Having more muscle generally gives you greater potential to produce force, but getting stronger also involves your nervous system, coordination, technique and your ability to use the muscle you already have.
That's why good strength training isn't simply about making muscles bigger.
We're trying to build tissue and teach your body how to use it.
For most of my clients, I care about both.
I want muscle on the frame.
But I also want that person capable of expressing strength with it.
Because once again:
Muscle should do something.
Staying Active Isn't Always Enough
I hear this one frequently:
“I'm really active.”
Great.
Keep being active.
Walk.
Hike.
Bike.
Swim.
Play pickleball.
Surf.
Garden.
Do the things you enjoy doing.
But being active and progressively strength training aren't necessarily the same thing.
Your body adapts to the demands you consistently place on it.
If we want to give it a reason to build or maintain muscle, we need to provide an appropriate resistance-training stimulus.
That doesn't mean every workout needs to be brutal.
It means the training needs to be challenging enough—and progressively adjusted enough—to continue asking your body to adapt.
Remember:
Can you express it?
Can you recover from it?
Does it serve a purpose?
More isn't automatically better.
But neither is doing the same easy workout indefinitely and expecting your body to keep changing.
You Also Have to Support What You're Trying to Build
You can't talk intelligently about building muscle without talking about nutrition and recovery.
Strength training provides a reason for your body to adapt.
Then you have to provide enough of what it needs to actually do that.
That includes adequate nutrition and sufficient protein.
It includes sleep.
It includes recovery between training sessions.
And it includes consistency.
This doesn't require turning your entire life into a laboratory experiment.
You don't need to weigh every bite of food, optimize every minute of sleep or spend your day worrying about whether you're recovering perfectly.
But if you're asking your body to build something, you should probably give it the materials and opportunity to do so.
We'll dig much deeper into protein, nutrition and recovery in future Coach's Corner articles.
For now, the important point is:
Training is the stimulus. Adaptation is the goal.
You Don't Need to Become a Bodybuilder
Whenever I talk about building muscle with someone who isn't already interested in strength training, I can almost see the image forming in their head.
Apparently I've just asked them to become a competitive bodybuilder.
I haven't.
You don't need to organize your life around the gym.
You don't need to pose under stage lights.
And you definitely don't need to start carrying a gallon jug of water everywhere you go.
You need enough muscle and strength to support your life.
What that looks like will be different for everyone.
A 45-year-old who wants to ski aggressively has different physical demands than a 70-year-old who wants to travel, hike and comfortably play with their grandchildren.
Both benefit from having more physical reserve.
The destination is different.
The principle is the same.
Build More Than You Need
This is really the point of the entire conversation.
I don't want you barely capable of meeting the demands of your life.
I want margin.
I want reserve.
If you can comfortably carry 40 pounds but everyday life normally asks you to carry 20, that's useful.
If you can confidently get yourself off the floor when you're healthy, you have more capacity available if circumstances become less favorable.
If you enter your 60s with years of muscle and strength behind you, you're starting that decade from a different place than if you wait until physical decline gets your attention.
That's the insurance policy.
You build capacity while you have the opportunity so it's there when you need it.
Don't Wait Until You Need It
One of the things my knee injury reinforced for me is that none of us knows exactly what's coming.
I certainly didn't plan on tearing my MCL.
But I was very glad that when it happened, I wasn't starting from zero.
That's how I want my clients thinking about strength training as they age.
Not:
“How little exercise can I get away with?”
And not:
“How hard can I destroy myself in the gym?”
Instead:
“What can I build now that my future self may be grateful to have?”
Muscle.
Strength.
Movement capacity.
Work capacity.
Healthy habits.
Good recovery practices.
A body that's been consistently asked to remain capable.
You hope you never need all of the reserve you're building.
But injuries happen.
Illness happens.
Aging happens.
Life happens.
I'd rather enter those situations with more strength, more muscle and more capacity than I need than discover I didn't build enough when I had the opportunity.
Because building muscle isn't just about getting stronger today.
It's one of the best insurance policies you can give your future self.
Not Sure Where Your Training Should Start?
You don't need to figure that out before we talk. We'll start with where you are, what you want your body to be able to do, and what kind of support actually makes sense for you.
Coach Dave Downey
Owner & Head Coach, Regenerate Strength
Strength & Conditioning Coach, Regenerate Health Medical Center
