There are several reasons; but I’d like to mention the absolute most critical below. This consideration will impact and shape your success, or lack thereof, concerning Longevity and the Quality of your Life to come. It is ‘THE’ critical component to the enjoyment of your latter years, far more important than weight loss, or exercise.

I’ll continue to train until the day I die, because there is such a thing as ‘Sarcopenia’, and it is real! In essence, this condition is the progressive loss of muscle mass with age. According to WebMd, this process starts ‘sometime in your 30s’. From birth to the age of approximately 30, your muscles gain mass and strength; but then the human organism begins a gradual decline.

Quite a few factors contribute to this onslaught, most recognizable are the following:

• Loss of nerve cell conduction from brain to muscle resulting in delay, recruitment, and contraction at the muscle cell level.
• Decreased hormone production such as testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin, among others.
• Not ingesting enough calories or protein on a daily basis to prevent catabolic mechanisms (appetite decreases with age).

In fact, this progression of Sarcopenia, as sinister as it is, entrains another deleterious condition that has come to be labeled as ‘Frailty’, usually seen in older adults; but in evidence at any age. ‘Frailty’ finds its roots in a sedentary lifestyle devoid of strength training of some type.

It follows then, that you want to enter this Sarcopenic timeframe of your life with the maximum amount of muscle mass packed onto your individual frame. You certainly do not need to look like a body builder, but you don’t want to be anorectic either. It follows that if you enter this stage with more muscle, you will start the process with more muscle to lose, meaning you will retain more muscle for longer.

How do you maximize muscle mass? Any type of resistive strength training does the job. For me, that has primarily been Cycling for lower body, and Swimming for upper body. Of note also is that for the better part of 3 decades, I was a mover and gained huge amounts of strength and muscle mass system wide from this employment. Though I dabbled with weights, I never really trained in a gym setting; it was just not my thing.  I had to be in the fresh air and moving.

Regardless of how you might do it, or how I did it, it is imperative to enter this catabolic era of life with a sizeable component of muscle mass to progressively lose. You won’t be able to escape the inevitable loss, but you’ll totally be in charge of the rate at which Sarcopenia will manifest.

Fortunately, I was doing precisely this without even knowing it throughout my life; I didn’t have a thought about Sarcopenia, until inevitable conclusions came to bear and the 600 pound gorilla jumped on my back!

I hardly race anymore, not because I can’t, but because there is no need, it’s just a distraction of the ego. I have a far loftier goal to accomplish. It is to have the same zest for life, the same physical abilities, the same physiologic adaptations I enjoyed 40 years ago when I was in Ironman shape, simple as that!

I can’t think of a nobler goal more appropriate at this stage of my life (in the physical realm at least), and my life is not over by a long shot!

Journey well my Friends!