Why Muscle Power Is The Key To Healthy Ageing.
Muscle metrics matter, but increasingly, we are learning that muscle power is a key metric to track.
The goal of exercising for longevity has two goals.
The first is extending lifespan - how long you live.
The second is improving healthspan - The quality of your life as you age.
Aerobic fitness is arguably the key driver of longevity, but resistance training is also a key driver of improvements in both lifespan and health span.
Muscle mass and muscle strength are critical metrics that predict how long you will live and also WHAT you will be able to do as you age1.
But there is a muscle metric that may be even more important to assess, track and train.
That Metric Is Muscle Power.
Muscle mass is the Amount of muscle you have.
Muscle strength is the amount of Force your muscle can generate.
Muscle power is how Quickly you can generate that force.
A key reason muscle power is an essential metric to track is that its decline may well be the bell weather of decline for the other metrics of muscle mass and strength.
Once muscle mass and strength decline, the process has been underway for some time, i.e., it is a lagging indicator.
Muscle power, on the other hand, is a leading indicator and an earlier predictor of future issues.
When muscle mass, strength and power fall below a certain level, your ability to do the things you want to do in the future will be impaired2.
In the image below, the dashed line represents when you lose the functional ability to do certain tasks.
It will be a loss of muscle power that will cause you issues first. You want to see the problem coming so you can take action.
Identifying declines in muscle power is a key way of doing this.
Muscle power is also something you can train to improve.
Impact Of Loss Of Muscle Power.
My longevity goal is to live until my mid-90s with some degree of functional independence, but at least during my 80’s, I can travel independently.
In practical terms, I want to be able to get to an airport, manage my own luggage, walk through the terminal and put my own bag in an overhead compartment.
In addition to being able to travel independently, I want to be able to look after myself and do basic tasks such as doing my shopping and carrying bags of groceries in from a car.
All of these tasks will require aerobic capacity, muscle strength, balance, flexibility and power.
But muscle power may be the biggest determinant of these activities, possibly even more so than muscle mass or strength.
Muscle power has been consistently shown to be a key predictor of functional independence and mobility in older adults3.
So tracking and training it is crucial.
Fall Prevention.
If you have reduced your risk of heart disease and cancer as you age, other threats rise to the surface.
A big factor here is the risk of falls.
Even a simple trip and fall can have serious consequences in old age.
A serious injury such as a traumatic hip fracture can spell doom. Even relatively healthy adults have a 37% chance of dying within five years after a traumatic hip fracture.
But if you are over 80 with some pre-existing mobility or cognition issues, that figure rises to a frightening 83% fatality rate at five years4.
Falling and breaking your hip is bad at any age, but when you are older, it is a very serious issue.
But an issue that can be avoided.
Greater muscle power has been shown to lead to fewer falls in older adults5.
Fewer falls. Fewer fractures.
This reduction in falls was not demonstrated in differing muscle strength levels, again highlighting the importance of muscle power over other muscle metrics.
Cognitive Impairment.
A critical component of healthy ageing is the maintenance of cognitive capacity and avoidance of dementia.
Muscle power may also play a role in the prevention or progression of dementia.
Higher muscle power measures, such as gait (walking) speed, were associated with a 50% reduction in the risk of dementia6.
Even in those with mild cognitive impairment, the likelihood of progressing to severe cognitive impairment was reduced by 48% if they had higher measures of muscle power.
Remember, health span is a function of what your body can do and your cognitive capacity to do it.
Muscle power, it seems, is tightly linked to both.
How Does Muscle Power Change Over Time?
Like the muscle metrics of mass and strength, muscle power also declines with age.
As with these other metrics, the goal of healthy ageing is to delay that decline to as little as possible for as long as possible.
The rate of decline of muscle power is slow at first.
The older you get, however, the faster the decline occurs.
For males in their 20s and 30s, the annual rate of power loss is marginal at 0.3% per year.
By the time people reach their 70s, this figure can be as high as 3.3% per year7.
The pattern is the same for females, with higher rates of power loss in their 20s and 30s, at 0.5% per year, accelerating to 3.5% per year by age 70.
In the words of Hemingway - these changes happen “Slowly. Then suddenly.”
Remember, it is loss of power that will cause you functional disability before loss of muscle mass and strength.
The loss of muscle power is even starkly evident in masters-level athletes.
Throwing and jumping are classic metrics of power and there is a clear reduction of atheletes performance in each category as they age8.
But just because we witness these declines in master athletes doesn’t mean that we cannot delay the onset of that decline at all levels of performance.
Assessing Muscle Power.
There are many ways to measure muscle power.
Some are complex or expensive, requiring challenging rotational movements or expensive equipment such as a force plate.
Others are simple to do and require little to no equipment.
One of the simplest measures of muscle power is the vertical jump test. This involves assessing how high a person can jump from a resting standing position and measures how high the feet rise from the ground.
A young adult should be able to clear 41cm as a male and 31 cm as a female9.
For older adults, a 30-second chair test is a reasonable proxy10.
The test involves assessing how many times you can rise and sit back down on a chair without using your arms in 30 seconds.
The more repetitions, the higher the expected power output11.
Training Power.
Increasing muscle power is typically done as part of a resistance training program.
While resistance training to improve muscle mass and strength relies on lifting progressively heavier loads, power training focuses on lifting less weight at a faster speed.
Compared to standard high-resistance, low-velocity resistance training, dedicated power training with lower resistance at a higher velocity has shown greater improvements in muscle power measures12.
This does not mean you should only train power. It is just a reminder that it needs to be included in your overall resistance training program.
What Does This Mean For You?
Given that muscle power is a crucial metric for predicting future changes in how we age, assessing and training muscle power is a useful step in promoting functional longevity.
How you train muscle power will depend on your current fitness status. If you are a young and able 25-year-old, your program will look very different from that of a 70-year-old post-knee replacement surgery.
The key is to work with a trained professional who can integrate power training into your routine.
Attempting to add explosive movement to your weight training regime without proper guidance can be a recipe for disaster, so approach this area carefully.
But for most people, adding some jumping or throwing movements into your routine will add value at a relatively low risk.
And just remember, rather than how big or strong your muscles are, it is muscle power that might be the best predictor of how well you age.
The question is:
Do you have the power to age healthily?
When You Are Ready, Here Is How We Can Help.
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Resistance Training and Mortality Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Am J Prev Med. 2022 Aug;63(2):277-285.
Powerpenia Should be Considered a Biomarker of Healthy Aging. Sports Med - Open 10, 27 (2024).
Rate of Force Development as a Predictor of Mobility in Community-dwelling Older Adults. J Geriatr Phys Ther. 2021 Apr-Jun 01;44(2):74-81.
Predictors of 5 year survival following hip fracture. Injury. 2011 Nov;42(11):1253-6.
Muscle power is more important than strength in preventing falls in community-dwelling older adults. J Biomech. 2022 Mar;134:111018.
Gait speed, handgrip strength, and cognitive impairment among older women - A multistate analysis. Exp Gerontol. 2022 Nov;169:111947.
Longitudinal changes in muscle power compared to muscle strength and mass. J Musculoskelet Neuronal Interact. 2021 Mar 1;21(1):13-25.
Age-associated power decline from running, jumping, and throwing male masters world records. Exp Aging Res. 2015;41(2):115-35.
ARKINSTALL, M et al. (2010) VCE Physical Education 2. Malaysia: Macmillian. p.248
Assessing muscular power in older adults: evaluating the predictive capacity of the 30-second chair rise test. Front Aging. 2024 Mar 6;5:1302574.
Functional fitness normative scores for community-residing older adults, ages 60-94. J Aging Phys Activity 1999;7(2):162-81.
Powerpenia Should be Considered a Biomarker of Healthy Aging. Sports Med - Open 10, 27 (2024).
Thank you. I have not thought about the importance of muscle power until now.
Excellent, accessible piece. I am late 50s and have weight trained twice a week for 6 years and feel much better for it. Good supervision is key - not all trainers understand ageing bodies!