USAWA

AGING AND STRONG

Part V: Recovery

By Dan Wagman, Ph.D., C.S.C.S.

 When I was in my 20’s I would frequently hear older guys, like in their 30’s, talk about how they couldn’t recover as well from training as they used to. At that point in my lifting career I couldn’t relate. Now, several decades later, I hear guys much younger than me making the same complaint—and still can’t relate. But one of the worst things any person can do is generalize from their own experiences onto others. And so we need to discuss training recovery based on evidence and not experience or beliefs.

 Investigating Recovery 

In looking at recovery research you have to pay close attention to detail. To illustrate, two studies have found older people to have a reduced immune response to a graded exercise test compared to younger adults, indicating a delayed recovery response.(3, 6) Other studies have associated the decreased muscle mass found in older adults to increase muscle repair time after exercise.(2, 7) Then a study found that older adults (~69-years old) who recreationally train between 3 to 6 hours per week take longer to recover than younger people.(9) On the other hand at least two studies have found no differences in recovery time between younger and older people.(1, 5) It’s important to understand, however, that these studies looked at different modes of exercise, training intensity, pre-training status of the subjects, and only one looked at subjects with weight training experience. This, therefore, represents the perfect example of how research evolves from study to study and why it’s critically important to look deeper than just the summary of research to derive at an accurate understanding of a particular issue.

            With the above in mind I believe the best study on the topic of recovery as it pertains to us meatheads was published just a few years ago by researchers from the University of Central Florida.(4) They looked at recovery abilities between young male adults aged between 18-30 compared to middle-aged ones between 40-59. All of the subjects had been training with weights for many years and had no physical limitations. They went through ridiculously tough training of 8 sets of 10 reps to failure in the leg extension. The machine used controlled the speed (isokinetic) of each rep so that no variability between subjects was possible. Baseline data were collected via a visual analog scale designed to record each subject’s subjective feelings of pain and soreness including ultrasound; blood draw; and performance measures at baseline, i.e., before the training session, immediately after training and 30, 60, and 120 minutes after training and again 24 and 48 hours after training.

The researchers were interested in seeing what differences there might be between the age groups in terms of various recovery-related variables such as their feelings of pain and soreness, cross-sectional muscle size and overall muscle thickness, isometric (static) muscle strength, and biochemical recovery markers of creatine kinase, c-reactive protein, myoglobin, and interleukin-6 concentrations. The findings can be best summarized in the researchers’ own words and in but one sentence:

“Results of this study indicated no differences in the recovery response between

            young-age and middle-age for any of the performance measures, nor in subjective

            levels of muscle pain or soreness.”

Recovery Reality

            Most lifters think about recovery this way, “I’m gonna squat till I drop today, so I’ll eat a big steak tonight and maybe I’ll even take tomorrow off.” That’s a simplistic way to look at it. In fact, even looking at just recovering is oversimplifying. You see, at the most fundamental level “recovering” from a training session means you’ll end up where you were before you trained. While I can’t speak for you, that’s insufficient for me as I want to end up at a place of greater strength. In other words, I want to recover from and adapt to my last training session.

When talking about recovery-adaptation you need to consider all that goes in to it. Full recovery-adaptation is influenced by all aspects of your training session, i.e., the composition of all training variables in relation to each other; heredity; demands of your job, school, family; social life; injury; sleep; nutrition; physical environment; and the sort of coach-athlete interaction you’re exposed to.(7) I’d like to shine a bright light on the fact that the athlete’s age is not part of the recovery-adaptation formula. Thus, regardless of your chronological age, if any of these variables are out of balance as necessitated by the demands of your training, recovery and adaptation will be compromised.

So now you know all there’s to know about the impact of chronological age on your ability to gain strength. That, of course, is an exaggeration. One of the hardest parts for me in writing this series of blogs was to decide what and how much information would fit the blog format, which is anything but scholarly. Still, there should now be little doubt in your mind that any losses in strength performance prior to your 60’s are not age-related and thus unnecessary and avoidable. And you’d most certainly agree that there’s little chance if any of you turning 40 and from then on you’ll bend the barbell less, and less, and less with every year of life as all-round weightlifting and many other strength sports would want you to believe. Yet I cannot dismiss what many of you are thinking, “If all this science is true, why am I weaker now that I’m in my 50’s than what I was in my 20’s? How do you argue against the fact that now that I’m 53 I’m benching 75-pounds less than when I was 26?” I’ll address that and more in the final part.

 References

1. Allman, B. and C. Rice. Incomplete recovery of voluntary isometric force after fatigue is not affected by old age. Muscle and Nerve 24:1156–1167, 2001.
2. Candow, D. and P. Chilibeck. Differences in size, strength, and power of upper and lower body muscle groups in young and older men. Journal of Gerontology and Biological Science in Medicine and Science 60:148–156, 2005.
3. Ceddia, M., et al. Differential leukocytosis and lymphocyte mitogenic response to acute maximal exercise in the young and old. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 31:829–836, 1999.
4. Gordon, J., et al. Comparisons in the recovery response from resistance exercise between young and middle-aged men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 31(12):3454-3462, 2017.
5. Klein, C., et al. Fatigue and recovery contractile properties of young and elderly men. European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 57:684–690, 1988.
6. Mazzeo, R., et al. Immune response to a single bout of exercise in young and elderly subjects. Mechanisms in Aging Development 100:121–132, 1998.
7. Peterson, M., et al. Influence of resistance exercise on lean body mass in aging adults: A meta-analysis. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 43:249–258, 2011.
8. Stone, M., et al. Principles and Practice of Resistance Training. Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL; 2007.
9. Toft, A., et al. Cytokine response to eccentric exercise in young and elderly. American Journal of Physiology and Cell Physiology 283:C289–C295, 2002.