Building Muscle For The Middle Aged

There are the basic tricks you need to know, eat right, exercise and get good rest. Those are basically the three things that are required for some good healthy muscle development.

But for us older guys with arthritis and other conditions we can't really do the same muscle blasting routines that the younger boys can. Honestly this is a bit depressing, but know the situation is not hopeless.

When we turn thirty, there is a physiological change in our body. The metabolism stops trying to create and expand, and it begins to more protect what it has.

This means even if you are lifting as much as the younger guys, your body isn't going to create the same amount of muscle. That is a sad fact of life, we age, and eventually it leads to us dying.

But don't worry about that because when we die we are going to be looking fit as ever, and this is how. That new research I mentioned and didn't say anything about, that is how.

Muscles work through contraction and they use blood flow to do this contracting. When there is more weight we need more blood flow, do you see where I'm going with this?

Probably not, cause if you did you would be a genius. So since us old men cannot lift the same as our younger male competitors, what do we do?

The trick and the big secret is blood flow restriction. This makes lighter weights seem heavier and actually stimulates muscle fiber synthesis.

In test done with middle age men, cuffs were placed on the subjects and light weights were lifted. The results showed that the low weights with cuffs actually created the same amount of effect as younger males doing high intensity lifting.

In the words of graduate student Christopher Fry, the lead author of the study. "The low-intensity exercise produced increases in protein synthesis, and activated two cellular pathways that stimulate protein synthesis and muscle growth in the post-exercise period."

What that means in humble terms is you are going to build more muscle with less weight. So for those of us who do not want to put any unnecessary tension on our suffering skeletons this is going to be a great way to do it.

Of course you will still have to get a good amount of protein and rest to allow your body to recover and recuperate properly. Make sure you do more research on how to perform specific exercises before you go putting tourniquets on your arms and trying bench presses.

Just as a safety precaution. We don't want anyone to accidently strap their arm up so tight that it falls off.

Destry Masterson is an author who has written hundreds of articles. She publishes articles for http://www.nordictrack.com and recommends them for treadmills. Contact Info: Destry Masterson - MyOnlineArticleWriting@gmail.com - Twitter: @DestryMasterson