It happens earlier in women than in men, but in both genders muscle starts to wither away if it’s not used.
University of Maryland’s Ben Hurley and Coopers Institute’s Steven Blair point about muscle mass loss and inactivity:
- Muscle atrophy for people with average activity levels starts at age 40 for women and in the late 50s for men
- For every decade after about age 50, you lose some 6 percent of your muscle mass, which comes with a 10 to 15 percent loss of your strength
- Anyone can build muscle back up with strength training exercises. After two months of training, we see a 40 percent increase in strength
- The earlier you start, the better. But even people over 100 years old can partially reverse some of the loss that occurs with aging
- The trick is to not just use the muscle, but to overload it. You have to make it work harder than it’s accustomed to
- If you overload it in a gradual, progressive way, you can make the muscles bigger and stronger by making each muscle fiber thicker