It’s never too late to start exercising

Older people who have never taken part in sustained exercise programmes have the same ability to build muscle mass as highly trained master athletes of a similar age, according to new research at the University of Birmingham. The research shows that even those who are entirely unaccustomed to exercise can benefit from resistance exercises such as weight training. In the study, published in Frontiers in Physiology , researchers in the University of Birmingham's School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Science compared muscle-building ability in two groups of older men. The first group were classed as 'master athletes' - people in their 70s and 80s who are lifelong exercisers and still competing at top levels in their sport. In the second were healthy individuals of a similar age, who had never participated in structured exercise programmes. Each participant was given an isotope tracer, in the form of a drink of 'heavy' water, and then took part in a single bout of exercise, involving weight training on an exercise machine. The researchers took muscle biopsies from participants in the 48 hour periods just before and just after the exercise, and examined these to look for signs of how the muscles were responding to the exercise.