Even the once Greek God-like Arnold Schwarzenegger has become noticeably frailer with time. But while muscle loss with aging is inevitable, Schwarzenegger has mentioned that there are ways to minimize this unwanted transformation.

Schwarzenegger's fitness-based digital guidance platform, Arnold's Pump Club, is his initiative to give back to the fitness and bodybuilding community. Through one of its newsletters, the Predator actor guided those who had been asking him how to minimize muscle loss due to ageing.

While Schwarzenegger accepted, "Father Time is undefeated," he advised not to give up on working out to decrease the extent of muscle loss with age. The 7x Mr. Olympia said, "The more you fight to keep what you have, the more you can hold on to your muscle and strength. And even if you start late, your body is still willing to respond and become stronger and more muscular."

Schwarzenegger added, "The science on muscle, strength, power, and function is clear: you don’t just lose it. You lose it because you don’t use it." His advice was clear: the only way to reduce the unavoidable age-related muscle loss was to continue hitting the gym.

However, Schwarzenegger didn't leave it just by describing the philosophy. He also suggested a well-defined guideline to decrease the rate of muscle loss due to ageing.

Here are the postulates of his guideline:

• Lifting two to three times per week
• Adding intensity, speed, and power to reps
• Eating plenty of proteins
• Making more physical movement in daily life.

Well, this might be enough knowledge for many, but Schwarzenegger has revealed more on this topic for those who desire a better understanding.

Arnold Schwarzenegger details the science behind muscle loss with age

Schwarzenegger highlighted how most people reduce the amount of physical activity with age, which signals the body to shrink the muscle tissues. This is what most view as muscle loss with age. He explained, "A muscle is expensive to keep around, and the body is ruthlessly practical. Use it, and it stays. Ignore it, and it trims the budget."

The other issue that worsens the case of muscle loss is the accumulation of fat over it. However, in many cases, some of it moves into the muscle itself, threading between and inside the fibers.

But thankfully, Schwarzenegger had a remedy for this one as well. He stated, "The overwhelming evidence suggests that the process of losing muscle and accumulating fat can be slowed and steered in the right direction by the same habits that built the underlying muscle in the first place."

So, The Terminator actor's advice to reduce muscle loss with age is quite simple: Make the muscles work to reduce their contraction, which will also help limit the fat accumulation over them.

Well, now that you have learned all this, are you thinking of making any changes to your lifestyle or gym routine to maintain a better volume of muscles for a longer time?

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Written by

Souvik Roy

Edited by

Ashvinkumar Patil