Study: Competitive Athletes Retain Muscle Into Their 60s and 70s

First, the bad news: once we pass 40, we lose 8 percent or more of our muscle mass each decade. Now the good news: not necessarily.  As Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times Well column, people who exercise sufficiently through their 50s, 60s and 70s keep the muscle on and the fat off. Reynolds directs our attention to a study published last month in the journal The Physician and Sportsmedicine in which University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 40 competitive runners, cyclists and swimmers ranging in age from 40 to 81. All were serious athletes who trained four or five times a week. The researchers found that athletes in their 70s and 80s remained strong, with almost as much thigh muscle mass as the athletes in their 40s and very little fat. And while there was some loss in leg muscle strength around age 60 in both men and women, it was minimal when compared to non-athletes. Wait there’s more. Another study cited by Reynolds found that competitive runners in their 60s still have almost as many neurons and muscle fibers as a group of active 25-year-olds, while people in their 60s who don’t run ordinarily have many fewer.