Is your body staging a quiet retirement without your permission? In this episode, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher discuss why the decade of your 40s represents a critical physical turning point. They break down the science of age-related muscle loss, explore why baseline cardiorespiratory activities like cycling or walking aren’t enough to protect your skeletal system, and explain how to view strength training as a essential proactive investment in your future physical independence. Tune in to find out how you can counteract the catabolic phase of aging and build your body’s “physical 401(k).
Is your body staging a quiet retirement without your permission? In this episode, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher discuss why the decade of your 40s represents a critical physical turning point. They break down the science of age-related muscle loss, explore why baseline cardiorespiratory activities like cycling or walking aren’t enough to protect your skeletal system, and explain how to view strength training as a essential proactive investment in your future physical independence. Tune in to find out how you can counteract the catabolic phase of aging and build your body’s “physical 401(k).”
Extra Elements Called Out In Audio – Or Elements That Should Be Edited Out
Submit your questions here: Strengthchangeseverything.com
Strength Changes Everything on Apple Podcasts
Strength Changes Everything YouTube Channel
And right now, if you’re not engaging in strength training, it’s looking at all the muscle that you’ve got and saying, we don’t use this. We don’t need it. Let’s get rid of it. We’re going to naturally be losing it unless we actively try to build it and be more intentional about that. Is this muscle loss inevitable? Welcome to the Strength Changes everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and wellbeing being.
I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co hosts are Brian Sagan, co founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence based strength training. And now for today’s episode. Thank you for joining us today on the Strength Changes everything podcast. We’re going to talk today about why strength training is the best investment you’ll make after 40. We’re going to talk about the decade of our 40s. And we’re going to talk about why you might want to consider strength training as something crucial to add in during this decade. We’re going to talk about what’s going on in this decade, what’s different about the 40s than maybe how things were up in the years up to 40. And then looking ahead as we get older, You know, what might we be able to ward off by strength training?
If you are in your 40s I encourage you to listen to this whole episode start to finish because you’re going to relate to a lot of the stuff we’re going to talk about today. And I wanted to tell you, Dr. Fisher, that I have been watching this show, and the show is called 100 Humans. The concept of the show is they take 100 humans and they use them during an episode to test out a hypothesis to a scientific question. They observe the human’s behavior. And then they get a result and then they bring in an expert to verify whether this result is backed up by research or not. And you can learn a lot about human behavior. But this one episode that I watched asked the question, what is the best decade to be alive?” And so on the show, they divided the 100 humans into age groups by decade, the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. They gave them some tasks to do, representing physical prowess, emotional Collaborative. Brain power. And the conclusion in this episode that the researcher ended up backing up is that the 40s were actually the low point to be alive. What they meant by that is the stress levels, you know, being the sandwich generation, caring for older and younger, the physical abilities, the brain power, the social. Their, the brain power.
The social connections all seem to be at their lowest in the 40s and the high points were the 20s and the 60s. And so, you know, there’s a lot of challenges that people face in their 40s that we can flesh out here. But I think that makes the case in terms of why taking care of yourself and knowing about changes that are coming your way might inspire you to, you know, think a little bit harder about your selfcare and about your fitness and your strength in this decade. So, what do you think about all that? And does that sound like something that might be true? Well. I found that really interesting. I’m going to have to check out this TV show. I definitely think there’s a lot to be said for the kind of stresses that go on in our life in our 40s. I am in my later 40s and I have older parents and a young child. So. I have that caring for both sides that you say. And I guess there’s also career responsibilities and a mortgage and things. So, You know, when we’re younger, we maybe don’t have the same responsibilities and we’re, you know, more focused on other things. And when we’re older.
Maybe we’ve passed those periods of responsibility. So I can definitely see the kind of psychological stress. And things like that. And there’s definitely some physical elements that would go with that at either end of the spectrum as well. So yeah. Interesting. Can you tell us what does research show happens to us physically once we get into our 40s? So what are the things that we are looking at in terms of our physical health after age 40. Backed up by research? Yeah. So I think that there’s definitely a notable sort of physical change that we probably see in our 40s. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not like we go from 39, where we’re young and fit and healthy and everything’s great, to suddenly we’re in our 40s and buying everything’s gone to pots. But by the time we’re in our fourth decade of life.
We’ve definitely passed the anabolic phase of the building, you know, great hormone levels of testosterone and estrogen and so forth. And we’re now a part point where certainly muscle loss will be on the decline. So we’re losing muscle. Strength certainly probably takes its first notable decline in our early 40s and probably again a couple of decades later. But the first dip is probably in the 40s. And with that, our physical function of power will decline and probably other things will decline with it. So we’re losing strength, we’re losing power, and we’re probably losing some other physical attributes as well. Our capacity to recover from physical stress and maybe psychological stress is inhibited. So there may be issues around our cortisol levels. We might find that at this age.
We’re more prone to get frustrated by small things or get annoyed or things like that. And that’s again, you know, hormones like cortisol and things like that. So our hormones are changing. And our connective tissues are becoming less resilient as well. So we’re going through these kind of This period of physical change that’s ultimately catabolic. It’s our body’s way of breaking down. We’re probably also on the track to reducing bone mineral density as well. So there’s quite a few things going on there. Yeah. We’ve talked so many times about how protective muscle is. And so when we start losing that, we’re no longer building it. Is what Dr. Fisher just said. We’re going to naturally be losing it unless we actively try to build it and be more intentional about that. And there are consequences to that muscle loss, even with women’s health. I know, you know, sensitivity to cortisol can increase the closer that they get to menopause, to where even things like going for a run, maybe in their 20s. Was a beneficial thing. But a stress of a 20 to 30 minute run or greater, you know, can actually spike cortisol levels, which everyone knows that cortisol is that stress hormone. It can lead to fat storage. And so there are things, you know, and we’re looking at decreased bone mineral density. And all of this is happening primarily due to that muscle loss.
But none of this sounds appealing. Laughs) But is this muscle loss inevitable? Well, so that’s the big question, right? We’re going through these physical changes, these negative catabolic changes, and we’ve got to ask the question, well. Is this something that I just have to put up with because my body’s aging and that’s it? And the answer is no. We absolutely don’t have to put up with those things at all. We’re able to hang on to muscle and we’re even able to rebuild muscle that we might have once had or even build it for the first time if we haven’t previously had it.
So many people in their 40s may not have been to the gym historically or may not have engaged in strength training, but maybe now this is something that they’re becoming more aware of as their body is starting to age. The reality is, our body reacts to the stresses placed upon it. So it’s not an age problem. It’s an underloading problem. So we need to load our musculoskeletal system if we want to catalyze adaptations. So if we want our muscles to become bigger and stronger, and we want our bones to retain their density or to improve their density, then we need to load them accordingly. And the best way to do that by far is by strength training. So we’re going to build strength. Going to build power, build muscle size some extent, and improve bone mineral density as well. Okay, so if you’re listening to this, you may have just heard how important it is to load that muscle. So I guess my natural, so going on a bike ride isn’t the same thing, is it, Dr. Fisher? So a lot of people, especially in their 40s, will start to say, oh. And they may be driven to this by appearance, by changes in their appearance. So maybe they put on a little bit of weight, maybe they look back at their 20s and they realize they put on 10 pounds since then, and they’re starting to think.
I’d love to look like I looked back then and so forth. And they might start to go for a walk or they might start to run or they might go and see their doctor, their general practitioner, who might say, yeah, you should do some exercise. And I’ve made the analogy before, a doctor saying, do some exercise is akin to me saying, Oh, you’re sick, take some drugs.” It’s very nonspecific It just doesn’t really mean anything in the big wide world of what exercise, of the spectrum of where exercise exists. But the reality is that a Is great for a muscular system and a cardiorespiratory system, but it won’t recruit the type two muscle fibers that we want to recruit to retain strength and muscle size, and it doesn’t allow our skeletal system to build and retain bone mineral density.
And in the same way, walking does neither of those things either. So it really has to be strength training to really stress our body in the right way. You know, I said if we’re underloading it, if we’re not providing a stimulus, our body won’t hang on to or build the muscle, the bone that it needs. So it’s simply a case of use it or lose it. Our body is looking for the most efficient way to exist. And right now, if you’re not engaging in strength training, it’s looking at all the muscle that you’ve got and saying, we don’t use this, we don’t need it, let’s get rid of it.
And we don’t want it to do that, right? Because there are some positives that we want to be able to maintain. We definitely don’t want it to do that. Right. So far, we’ve established in our 40s and beyond, we’re losing muscle. There are some consequences to losing muscle that we want to avoid. In order to avoid losing that muscle and avoid those negative consequences, we need to load the muscles effectively. Let’s talk about sort of the flip side of the coin. What does taking a more proactive approach to strength training help us in terms of capabilities?
So, like proactively, what are we going to achieve if we do that in our 40s? Right. And of course Many people listening to this don’t come from my mindset. You know, I’ve been obsessed with strength training that I’ve made in my career as far as 20 years of research and lecturing and so forth in academia. But actually, most people are not interested in muscle and they’re not interested in going to the gym. What they’re interested in is being able to walk up a flight of stairs or lift their children or grandchildren or recover from an injury or a fall or even maintain their balance and prevent a fall.
Be able to get up and down off the floor. I had a student a few years back and he was really big on this idea that a lot of our movements should be floor based. And he said to me, You know, I mean, in your 40s, how often do you get up and down off the floor? And at the time, I had a very young son and I said, Well, actually, a lot of times in the day. But I’m a few years on from there and it gets harder to get up and down off the floor if we don’t retain that physical capability, you know, and then carrying shopping traveling, just retaining any level of physical independence.
You know, our capacity to even go for a walk is improved by engaging in strength training. And those are the things that people are interested in. And when we’re in our 40s, we can make a bigger change to those factors because we can hang on to them. This is not to say that you can’t make physical improvements. When you strengthen your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, your 80s and beyond, because you absolutely can. But in your 40s when you’re Starting to lose this physical, you’re starting to see these physical changes, this is where you can kind of help your body resist that catabolic phase and hang on to every bit of muscle that you’ve got. I’m picturing sort of life as a timeline and if you chunk it up by decades in a ruler, you know, once you’ve passed that decade of your 30s, we’re now in the catabolic state. And so, this first decade of our 40s, we start to notice changes that are undesirable and we start to need to ward things off a little bit more intentionally. And in order to maintain the quality of life that we used to have or that we want in the future, we need to start considering strength training.
So, it becomes what I’m picturing to be sort of this first like golden window of investment opportunity to take this proactive step to make the rest of our decades better. Would that be a fair statement? Yeah. And I love that phrase phraseology. We had Matt Bresci on the show earlier in the year, and he referred to strength training as an investment. And since then, I think we’ve talked about it in terms of our bodies 401k. It’s our physical investment in our future. So we’re not, when we’re in our 40s, we might not be, or when we’re in our 40s, we are thinking about our financial future and financial security and financial stability and are those we are, you know, we care for, but are we thinking of our physical stability and our physical future and our physical independence. And hence why the analogy to a 401k and making that investment is absolutely true. If we don’t try to maintain our muscles in our 40s, they’re going to naturally drop. And so it’s never too late to start, but we’re further and further from what our baseline could be the longer we wait to address this.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So there’s quite a lot of research around the physical benefits of strength training. You know, we’ve talked a lot on the show about the acute benefits, so the immediate benefits, you know, in the hours and days post a workout, post each resistance training workout, as well as then the chronic benefits that happen at sort of, you know, four, six, 12 weeks, you know, three months, six months, one year, and so forth. But just to sort of summarize, we’ve talked about insulin sensitivity and blue. Blood glucose regulation. Obviously, we’ve mentioned bone density. There, but there’s blood pressure and cardiovascular health. One of the big ones for me is cognitive function, depression, reduced risk of things like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Overall, our body composition is key, and that might lead back to our kind of physical perception of our appearance. But there’s metabolic health as well.
And a good way to think about this is muscle is the largest organ of metabolic health that we can impact. So, you know, we think about it putting in our body in our 40s. We might start thinking about a healthy diet and more nutritious diet, less processed foods, more fruits and vegetables, and so forth. But are we also thinking about maintaining our muscle, which is the bit that really helps our metabolism stay active? I love this because sometimes it can be hard for somebody to appreciate long term benefits of anything. That they’re doing, even investment or anything like that.
This is for my problem 20 years from now. It’s not for me right now. And it can be hard to sort of tap into the motivation needed to pay dividends to your future self. So even if you can’t tap into that, the benefits right now, I mean, I’m in my 40s. And to me, as a woman in my 40s, I’m doing strength training now because of the acute benefits, because it helps me manage stress, because it helps me function and feel better and maintain the lifestyle that I’m looking for. It actually does more for me metabolically than hours of running used to do.
I care about staying healthy and it works so quickly as well in my busiest season of life, right? And so I’m all about those acute benefits. Let’s celebrate those acute benefits, also knowing at the same time that those long term chronic benefits are happening. Okay. Well, this is pretty motivating. I mean, I think in this episode, we’ve established and let us know if we’ve missed anything, Dr. Fisher, is that our 40s are unique because we, you know, have been growing up and we’ve been building muscle. And probably most of us up till our 40s, unless you’ve had a major injury, have found it relatively easy to maintain our muscle, to build muscle to be active, and to live the lifestyle we want.
We probably haven’t worried too badly about any chronic diseases, such as heart disease or anything like that prior to this decade. But once we turn the corner in our 40s, we have muscle loss that has a whole host of implications for our future. And so the 40s become our peak and first golden opportunity to build a healthier future. And also enjoy benefits right now that we need and we’re not naturally going to get by walking or biking alone. Is that a fair summary so far? Yeah, definitely. That’s absolutely accurate. Okay. So, you know, if you’re listening today, I think this is really, really something to consider. What are your, you know, Dr. Fisher, what would you leave people with in terms of this if they are in their 40s? Yeah, I think we’ve covered some really important content, and I hope some of it’s really resonated with people.
There’s one final thing I wanted to touch on, and I want to be mindful that many people listening will be speaking back to their car stereo or the screen if they’re watching on YouTube and saying, Hey, hold on, I haven’t done this before. I’m not fit enough to go to the gym, or I’m too old to do this, or how do I do this? And I want to be mindful that many people do have barriers to exercise. They might say they don’t have time or they don’t have the financial sustainability to maintain longterm gym habits and so forth.
And the reality is that these changes, this idea of going to the gym and engaging in strength training is not something that’s hours and hours of exercise. And commercial gyms do a terrible job of promoting healthy, sustainable strength training to people over the long term. And this is where the exercise coach comes back in with two times 20 minutes per week. It’s this idea that it’s very palatable from a time Point of view and from a financial point of view. It’s not a costly health club membership with all the things that you’re never going to have time to use. It’s safe, it’s supervised, it’s all the things that you need and nothing that you don’t need. So it’s all about that efficiency and it’s completely appropriate for everyone and it’s going to meet you at the level that you’re at. And that’s the idea of strength training.
Strength training is not for strong people, strength training is not for bodybuilders, strength training is wasted on bodybuilders. Strength training is for the people that need it most. And if you’re in your 40s and have never engaged in strength training, then this is you that I’m speaking to because it’s you’re the person that really needs to start to think about this or engage in this. So, you know, I just want to be mindful. I know that’s a bit of a tangent from what we were talking about, but I think it’s important to be aware that many people do have these barriers.
Going back to your question, as far as any kind of final points, I think that, um, You know, it’s so. I think that if there was a pill that you could take that had all the physical and psychological health benefits of strength training, then everybody would take it. There’s no question about it. If your doctor could prescribe this to you, you would do it. So why wouldn’t you engage in strength training anyway, knowing the investment that you’re making in your future and knowing the acute investment that you’re making in your present? Absolutely. Yeah, the reality is going to be harder and harder from here on out. And so, you know, if you’re in your 40s today, I hope that this episode was motivating for you to consider what you can do today to stay strong and to maintain that strength going forward into your future. Thank you for tuning in today. And we will see you next week on the podcast. Until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverythingcom Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode.
Here’s to you and your best health.
CLAIM YOUR TWO FREE SESSIONS
