JJ Virgin4x NYTimes Best Selling Author, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer

Women Lose 2-4% of Muscle Every Year!

1 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, JJ Virgin explains that women begin losing muscle mass at age 40 at a rate of about 1% per year if they are not actively using it, and this rate roughly doubles after age 60. She emphasizes that the loss of strength is even more pronounced, with a 2‑4% decline in strength each year. Consequently, she argues that preserving and building muscle and strength should be a top priority for women as they age. Her prescription is to engage in heavy resistance work—whether using body weight, free weights, cables, or TRX—focusing on large, full‑body movements taken to fatigue to stimulate muscle growth and maintain strength.

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Starting at age 40, we lose 1% of our muscle mass every single year if we're not using it, and it doubles starting at age 60. But it gets worse because that's muscle mass. We actually lose even more strength, 2 to 4% of our strength. So that means building and maintaining muscle mass and strength is priority number one. Here's how to do it. You gotta lift heavy things. That could be your body weight, that can be free weights, that could be cables, it could be a TRX. The important thing is that you're doing big full body movements to fatigue.