Sarcopenia Prevention After 40: How to Maintain Muscle, Strength, and Mobility for Life

The month of July was Sarcopenia Awareness month, so I thought it was only fitting for me to write an article on the topic. While everything I talk about is relevant to the fight against Sarcopenia, I’m going to hone in on the definitions offered to us by multiple international groups. Between the six I researched including the IWGS, the ASWG, and the FNIH, among others, it became clear that the medical community uses three domains to define sarcopenia: gait speed, muscle mass, and muscle strength (as measured by grip strength or getting out of a chair).

I.   Gait Speed: This is simply how fast you walk. If you think about it, it is a great indicator of several important factors: strength, power, stamina, and balance. All things that begin to wane as we age.

In order to maintain gait speed we need to WALK. This is why, as part of my programming,  I help clients work up to 10,000 steps most days. While it might seem silly compared to the other things I help my clients achieve, maintaining the ability to walk will help prevent the inability to walk. If you have dreams of travel, hiking, and enjoying life after 40 with your loved ones, this is a non-negotiable. For an added bonus, go ahead and throw on a weight vest or have the goal to add one as your body becomes more accustomed to walking.

II. Lean muscle mass. This means we need to be engaging in the type of weightlifting that increases muscle mass. This is where that 8-12 rep range comes in. Remember, when I say 8-12 reps they have to be so heavy you can’t get out that 12th rep. This heavy weight training should be done no fewer than three times per week and should be cycled with strength building cycles for optimal muscle health and performance (more on that later).

In preparation for writing this article, I did my homework. As part of that homework, I listened to a fair number of lectures and was less than impressed by some of the presentations. One that stood out to me had a college professor poo-pooing on DEXA as well as the importance of lean body mass. Clearly, he had done a great job reporting back on numbers. Clearly, he hadn’t done ANY homework on the physiology of the thing. While I address his dismissal of DEXA below, I want to address his dismissal of lean body mass right here using the words of the incomparable Dr. Stacy Sims—author of the phrase  “women are not small men”. Here's what her book “Next Level” has to say about it:

“If you do nothing to stem that loss (muscle loss), you can expect to lose up to 8% of your strength each decade after your 30th birthday, and that decline accelerates after age 60. So, by the time you’re 55 , you might be 20% weaker” (Sims, Next Level p87)

While strength and muscle mass are not the same thing, they are closely linked. Especially important to women is the fact that “estrogen is…the main driver of muscle mass and strength.” (Sims, Next Level p87). Dr. Sims goes on to state that when “researchers take biopsies of women shortly before and after their transition to menopause, they see their ability to regenerate muscle stem cells “plummet by 30 to 60 percent.” (Sims, Next Level, p87).

Muscle mass is important to women, especially peri and post menopausal women because it:

1)     Increases Metabolic Rate: Muscle mass takes huge amounts of energy to sustain. It is what we call “metabolically expensive”.

2)     Improves Posture and Stability by “stimulating your tendons to increase their tension” which is something that they begin to lose with the decline of estrogen.

3)     Maintenance of Healthy Body Composition: During peri- and post- menopause, our decreased estrogen not only makes it harder to build and maintain muscle, it also increases our bodies’ fat storage – especially around the mid-section. When we stimulate the body with heavy lifting, it increases insulin sensitivity (which is wildly beneficial for peri and post menopausal women), stimulates muscle growth hormones, and quite possibly influences the signals that communicate with fat cells and encourages their breakdown.

(Sims, Next Level pp88-90).

*A special note:  The same college professor who spent 15 minutes telling us how trivial muscle mass is was pontificating on how DEXA is not a good diagnostic tool for sarcopenia. Maybe he’s right. Maybe as a diagnostic tool there is something else that’s better. But here’s the thing, as a personal trainer and women’s health coach, I’m not looking to diagnose sarcopenia – I’m looking to prevent it. And, quite honestly, so should you be. DEXA is an invaluable tool for keeping track of your muscle mass, determining whether you are keeping or losing it, and helping you get ahead of the ball so you aren’t sitting in a doctor’s office getting diagnosed with Sarcopenia. The most important thing to know about Sarcopenia is how to prevent it.

III. Grip Strength: while not all world health organizations use this to measure strength, several do. I personally like it as there is other evidence that suggests that the extremely simple exercise called “farmers carry” is a great predictor of longevity. In that exercise, the client simply carries two weights from one place to another. Research shows that in women who can carry 75% of their body weight for 1 minute, there is a significant reduction in cardiovascular disease, dementia, disability, and overall early death. There is also a decreased probability that you will need your teenage sons to open jars for you 😊. Special Note: I open jars for my teenage sons-stay strong so they stay just slightly scared.

All of this talk about grip strength comes down to strength really. If you were to just do a farmer’s carry I highly doubt that would help you create the active, healthy life you want. It is absolutely imperative that you develop strength through highly varied movements and modalities. This is why my clients receive training that has them working with dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, and doing things like chin-ups, pull-ups, deadlifts, and cleans. Not only does this work their grip strength, it works their grip strength under conditions of high force (if you haven’t seen my lifting videos, you can see them on my YouTube channel SaveYourselfCoaching.)

These movements also build extreme strength in the core, the legs, the back, the shoulders, and everywhere else. They also increase speed, power, flexibility and stability. Compound movements, like the ones described above are, without a doubt, the absolute best way to build your overall strength and resilience. The endless fitness trend of working on machines and doing leg presses and bicep curls are crippling the masses. They retain their popularity because they require little to no skill from either client or coach but they also yield little to no benefit for the woman who is looking to live her life to the fullest for the next 40 years.

If you have questions about sarcopenia and want to get some answers that are more specific to you, please feel free to book a free 30-minute consultation. My consultations are no pressure, no selling. It’s just a 30 minute conversation where you get to pick my brain – and every woman on earth gets 1 of those.