JJ Virgin explains how inactivity costs you 1% muscle mass yearly, accelerating after 60. He prescribes three weekly sessions of compound lifts like squats and deadlifts, done in sets of 8-30 reps pushed to near-failure to stop the decline.
And if you are not using your muscles, you are losing your muscles. Starting at age 40, we lose up to 1% of our muscle mass a year, 2 to 4% of our strength, and up to 6% of our power. And it starts to double at age 60. And I say, not on my watch. So you gotta be doing resistance training. That means lifting heavy things for you. How heavy? Depends how much you can lift. You wanna be working to a point somewhere. And by the way, it's pretty broad range, but somewhere between 8 repetitions and 30 repetitions. Multiple sets, but by the time you get towards the end, you should feel like you have to stop, that you're really getting to your max, that you're getting to that point of failure. So I'll go into the gym 3 times a week. I will do big compound movements like squats, like push-ups, like pull-ups, like overhead presses, chest presses, deadlifts, and I will get to the point on the last couple sets where I really feel like I cannot do another one. That's what you want to get to.
