Consider the woman in the garden, seventy-five years old, rising from a low deckchair without so much as a sigh, a groan, or the strategic deployment of both armrests. Her grandchildren find this unremarkable. Her contemporaries find it faintly suspicious, possibly witchcraft. Everyone else thinks it's purely good luck. In truth, it is simply a matter of biology.
What she has, and what a great many people lose without ever being told they're losing it, is muscle. Not gym-mirror muscle, though that's a perfectly nice side effect. Functional muscle: the kind that gets you out of a chair, up a flight of stairs, and off the floor after you've dropped your phone under the sofa for the third time that week, all without narrating the experience out loud.
Building muscle, as it turns out, is a strong contender for the single best longevity hack going, at any age you care to start. Not a supplement, not a superfood, not a wearable. Muscle.
The Test That Looks Ridiculous But Isn’t
Ask someone what determines how long they'll live and reasonably you'll hear about diet, sleep, and perhaps a naming of an ancestor who smoked forty a day and lived to ninety-six out of sheer spite. Muscle rarely comes up, which is odd, because researchers keep finding it's one of the more reliable clues going.
Take the sitting-rising test, a startlingly simple measure in which people lower themselves to the floor and back up again using as few points of contact (hands, knees, forearms) as possible.
A study following more than two thousand adults for an average of six years found that those who needed the most assistance to complete the manoeuvre had a substantially higher risk of dying during the follow-up period than those who managed it unaided.1
Grip strength tells a similarly eye-opening story: a study spanning seventeen countries found that for every 5kg drop in grip strength, the risk of death from any cause rose by around sixteen per cent, a stronger association than blood pressure showed for the same outcome.2
Neither test measures how muscle looks. Both measure what muscle does, and what it does, apparently, matters rather a lot.
What's Actually Disappearing: Muscle Mass and Ageing
Muscle mass doesn't announce its departure. It tends to decline gradually from somewhere in your thirties onwards, then rather more briskly once you're past sixty, a process researchers call sarcopenia3 and everybody else calls “getting older.”
Left unchallenged, this shows up eventually as a weaker grip, slower stairs, and a growing reliance on the good old armrest. Challenged, even briefly, muscle tends to respond reassuringly better than its reputation suggests.
This is where the encouraging part begins.
It Is Never Too Late to Build Muscle
In 1990, researchers put a high-intensity resistance programme in front of a group of nursing home residents, average age eighty-seven, several using canes and walkers. Eight weeks later, their thigh muscle strength had increased by an average of around 174 per cent, and two participants gave up their walking aids entirely.4
Eighty-seven. If that doesn't retire the phrase “too old to start,” it's difficult to imagine what would.
Somewhere in that same process, deltoids tend to reappear that haven't been seen since sixth-form PE, and abdominal definition turns up unexpectedly, entirely capable of unsettling a confident twenty-two-year-old at a swimming pool.
You do not need a programme quite that dramatic to benefit, thankfully. Two or three short sessions a week, working the major muscle groups with a weight that genuinely challenges you by the last few repetitions, can be enough to make a worthwhile difference.
The research backs up the idea that a little strength training can go a surprisingly long way. A large pooled analysis of muscle-strengthening activity and mortality found that thirty to sixty minutes a week was associated with a significantly lower risk of overall mortality.5
This is not a second job. It is a couple of short sessions a week.
If a Gym Really Isn't Happening: Other Ways to Build Muscle
Not everyone wants a gym membership, and muscle, refreshingly, isn't precious about where the work happens. A quick scroll through YouTube turns up an entire industry of relentlessly upbeat presenters, each convinced their own routine is the one that will finally sort you out.
Three approaches, at least, come with more than just enthusiasm behind them.
Tai chi involves a fair bit more squatting than its serene reputation suggests. A systematic review of community-dwelling older adults found consistent improvements in lower-limb muscle strength alongside better balance, with the gains coming from nothing more dramatic than slow, deliberate transfers of weight from one bent leg to the other.6
Pilates is easy to underestimate from the outside too. A randomised controlled trial in older women found a structured mat-based Pilates programme improved both muscle strength and gait speed over several months, using nothing but body control and a floor.7
And callisthenics, which is really just resistance training that never bought any equipment, holds up convincingly well under scrutiny: eight weeks of progressive push-up training produced measurable increases in chest muscle thickness and strength, in the same ballpark as what a bench press might achieve.8
None of these requires a car park, a membership fob, or a mirrored wall. They involve a bit of floor space and a willingness to look faintly ridiculous in your living room for twenty minutes.
Feeding the Machine: Protein for Building Muscle
Whichever version you pick, muscle still needs feeding afterwards, and the raw material is protein, distributed across the day rather than saved for one heroic dinner.
Requirements tend to rise with age rather than fall, since older muscle appears to need a slightly larger protein hit to trigger the same building response younger muscle manages on less. Somewhere in the region of 1.2 to 1.6g per kilogram of bodyweight daily for most older adults, according to international expert consensus.9
Eggs, fish, yoghurt, lentils, and a chicken thigh eaten without apology all count toward it.
Creatine: A Little Extra Help for Hard-Working Muscle
Creatine tends to come up at this point, and reasonably so. It's a compound your body already makes, stored largely in muscle tissue. Topping it up through diet or a supplement has been studied extensively alongside resistance training in older adults.
A recent meta-analysis found creatine paired with resistance training was associated with notably greater gains in lower-body strength and lean tissue mass than resistance training alone, including across several trials in postmenopausal and older populations.10
Neutrient Advanced Creatine keeps to the studied 5g daily dose of creatine monohydrate, paired with magnesium malate, in an unflavoured powder that dissolves into whatever you're already drinking.
The Chair Test and Other Small Miracles
There's a certain kind of standing up that deserves recognition: the kind performed without noise. No sigh, no “oof,” no announcing to the room that you're “not as young as you were.”
Getting there is mostly a function of the muscle-building work above, but magnesium plays a supporting role worth naming. It’s involved in the basic mechanics of a muscle contracting and then, crucially, relaxing again afterwards, as well as ordinary energy metabolism and the electrolyte balance that keeps cramp at bay after a proper session.11
Neutrient Magnesium combines five forms, including citrate, taurate and bisglycinate, in case one form alone doesn't sit well with a particular stomach.
The Bones Holding It All Up
Muscle doesn't work in isolation. It attaches to bone, pulls against bone, and depends on a skeleton sturdy enough to be worth pulling against, which is where vitamin D earns a mention it doesn't always get where muscle is concerned.
Beyond its well-established role in bone health, vitamin D receptors sit directly in muscle tissue itself. According to a review pooling multiple trials, supplementation is associated with measurable improvements in strength, gait and balance among older adults, particularly those who started out with lower levels.12
Neutrient D3 + K2 delivers 2000 IU of D3 alongside K2 as a sublingual spray, worth a mention as the mornings shorten and UVB exposure drops off along with them.
Envious Abs Optional. Standing Up Silently, Non-Negotiable.
None of this requires a gym membership you'll abandon by February, or a protein shaker permanently attached to one hand. It requires picking something heavy up a couple of times a week, eating enough protein to make the effort worthwhile, and giving your body a handful of nutrients it's been running a little short on, while you were busy assuming muscle was somebody else's department.
The abs are optional. The pecs, entirely your call. But the woman in the deckchair isn't showing off. She's simply demonstrating what a body can still do when it's asked to, at any age you care to name, which is really the whole point of the exercise, several times over.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does muscle become harder to maintain with age?
Ageing muscle doesn't respond to dietary protein and exercise quite as readily as younger muscle does. This means that maintaining muscle later in life requires a little more attention to the combination of resistance exercise, adequate nutrition and recovery.
What is sarcopenia and when does it start?
Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle mass and function. Muscle decline can begin in midlife and tends to accelerate with advancing age, which is one reason maintaining muscle becomes increasingly important as the years go by.
Is muscle mass more important than body weight as you get older?
Body weight alone tells us relatively little about how well someone is ageing physically. Muscle mass, strength and functional ability provide a different picture, which is why measures such as grip strength and the ability to rise from the floor can be informative.
Written by: Jacqueline Newson BSc (Hons) Nutritional Therapy
References
- Brito LBB, Ricardo DR, Araújo DSMS, Ramos PS, Myers J, Araújo CGS. Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 2014;21(7):892-898.
- Leong DP, Teo KK, Rangarajan S, et al. Prognostic value of grip strength: findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study. The Lancet. 2015;386(9990):266-273.
- Larsson L, Degens H, Li M, Salviati L, Lee YI, Thompson W, Kirkland JL, Sandri M. Sarcopenia: aging-related loss of muscle mass and function. Physiological Reviews. 2019;99(1):427-511.
- Fiatarone MA, Marks EC, Ryan ND, Meredith CN, Lipsitz LA, Evans WJ. High-intensity strength training in nonagenarians: effects on skeletal muscle. JAMA. 1990;263(22):3029-3034.
- Momma H, Kato K, Sawada SS, Gando Y, Kawakami R, Lee I-M, Wen CP, Sui X, Tsukamoto K, Blair SN. Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2022;56(13):755-763.
- Bagiartana KDA, Huriah T. A systematic review of the effectiveness of Tai Chi exercises for improving balance and lower limb muscle strength of the elderly in the community. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences. 2021;9(T5):6-12.
- Aibar-Almazán A, Martínez-Amat A, Cruz-Díaz D, de la Torre-Cruz MJ, Jiménez-García JD, Zagalaz-Anula N, Redecillas-Peiró MT, Mendoza-Ladrón de Guevara N, Hita-Contreras F. The influence of Pilates exercises on body composition, muscle strength, and gait speed in community-dwelling older women: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2022;36(8):2298-2305.
- Kotarsky CJ, Christensen BK, Miller JS, Hackney KJ. Effect of progressive calisthenic push-up training on muscle strength and thickness. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2018;32(3):651-659.
- Bauer J, Biolo G, Cederholm T, et al. Evidence-based recommendations for optimal dietary protein intake in older people: a position paper from the PROT-AGE Study Group. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. 2013;14(8):542-559.
- Liu SC, Huang N, Wu WJ, OuYang X, Luo Y, Zhong YB, Wang MY, Xiao L. The impact of creatine supplementation associated with resistance training on muscular strength and lean tissue mass in the aged: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European Review of Aging and Physical Activity. 2025;22(1):26.
- Wang R, Chen C, Liu W. The effect of magnesium supplementation on muscle fitness: a meta-analysis and systematic review. Magnesium Research. 2017;30(4):120-132.
- Muir SW, Montero-Odasso M. Effect of vitamin D supplementation on muscle strength, gait and balance in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2011;59(12):2291-2300.
