The trajectory
Muscle mass declines gradually from early middle age, and strength falls faster than mass — meaning quality goes before quantity. Power, the ability to produce force quickly, declines faster still. In women the decline steepens around the menopausal transition, which is the same window bone is being lost fastest.
What reverses it
Progressive resistance training works at every age studied, including in people in their eighties and nineties, and adequate protein supports it. Nothing else has a comparable record — not a supplement, not a hormone in someone who is not deficient, not a peptide. Where a genuine deficiency exists, correcting it helps, but it helps most alongside training rather than instead of it.
The cheapest thing you can track
Grip strength correlates with whole-body strength and, across large observational cohorts, with all-cause mortality. A dynamometer is inexpensive. Train the whole body and read grip as the output, rather than training grip in isolation — the number is informative because of what it reflects, not because of what it is.
Key points
- Strength falls faster than mass; power faster still.
- Progressive resistance training works at every age studied.
- Grip is a read-out of whole-body strength, not a target in itself.
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