Beyond bigger muscles
Building or keeping muscle through strength training, eating enough protein, and getting enough rest is a big focus in wellness right now. These ideas are not new, but people are finally paying more attention to them—not just as a passing trend, but as something important for feeling better, staying healthy, and living longer.
As we age, hormones shift, and muscle mass can decline with less activity. Yet at any life stage, you can become stronger, improve body composition, and build the confidence to carry, balance, and move well.
In April 2026, the American College of Sports Medicine released a new statement on resistance training. What stood out to me was that the biggest improvements can come simply from starting to strength-train regularly, especially if you have not been doing it before.
Simply put: You do not need a complicated plan, a complete gym setup, or the hardest workout. What matters is finding a routine you can stay consistent with, recover from well, and gradually make more challenging over time.
Train for body recomposition: lose fat while protecting muscle
If you are trying to lose weight, an important question is: Are you losing mostly the excess body fat, or a combination of fat and muscle? If you lose weight too quickly or focus only on the number on the scale, you might actually be losing muscle mass, too. This can make it harder to stay strong, keep your energy up, move well, and maintain your weight in the long run.
Body recomposition is about improving the balance between fat and muscle. This means losing excess body fat while maintaining or gradually building muscle. Muscle helps you move, supports your metabolism and bones, and helps you stay independent as you age. Keep in mind, though, that even maintaining the muscle you already have requires a solid combined effort of a consistent resistance-training routine, proper nourishment, and adequate recovery.
A body composition scale can help you see changes over time. If your weight stays the same, are your clothes fitting more loosely? As your weight changes, are you getting weaker or still getting stronger?
Building muscle matters most when your muscle mass is low or going down, but once you have a healthy body composition, progress is not always about getting bigger. Things like age, genetics, muscle type, hormones, and training history all affect how much muscle you can gain.
That said, keeping your muscle while getting stronger, more balanced, and more capable is already great progress.
Whether your goal is to build muscle, preserve what you have, or further improve body composition, avoid excessively aggressive dieting or regular prolonged cardio that leaves you unable to train the next session. Support your training by eating enough protein and food overall, getting enough carbs for energy, and making sure you sleep well. Most of your body’s restoration and growth from training happens while you sleep.
The ACSM recommends starting with two full-body strength workouts each week that work your main muscle groups. Pick weights that feel tough but still let you keep good form for about eight to 15 reps. As you get stronger, you can slowly add more weight, do more reps or sets, try harder exercises, or add another workout.
Train in a way that supports your recovery
As you get older, recovery is just as important as exercise. Working out is good for you, but if you push too hard, it adds to the stress your body already faces from work, family, poor sleep, stress, travel, illness, and the usual changes that come with age.
The goal is to balance your workouts with the rest of your life and give your body enough time to recover so you can keep strength training as a regular habit.
High-volume training can still be appropriate for older adults. But the real question is whether you can recover well enough to return to your next scheduled workout with good energy, focus, and movement quality. Remember: Progress is not only about lifting heavier or training more intensely. It also includes improvements in endurance, balance, power, core stability, and, of course, the ability to keep showing up.
Sustainable progress means establishing the right balance of weight, intensity, and workout time that fits your capabilities and daily life. Your workouts should leave you with enough energy for other things and help you sleep better. If your routine is too intense to recover from, you might lose consistency or risk burnout or injury.
Pay attention to signs that your workouts might be too much for your body to handle—such as a higher resting heart rate, poor sleep, feeling more tired than usual, reduced performance, persistent soreness, or a loss of motivation to train. If these symptoms keep happening or you are concerned, talk to a qualified health professional rather than relying solely on your wearable data.
Train beyond perfect form… and keep progressing
There is no single perfect way to train. Free weights, machines, resistance bands, bodyweight exercises, and simple tools can all work well when they fit your current level, challenge you, and let you keep progressing.
Real life does not happen only on flat floors or when your body is perfectly positioned. You carry bags on one side, step off curbs, climb stairs, twist to pick something up, catch yourself when you lose your balance, and get up from the floor without any nearby support.
That is why strength training should be more than just doing squats, deadlifts, lunges, push-ups, and rows over and over. It is important to start by learning good form for these moves, as they are the basics of sitting, standing, lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying, and climbing. But once you have good form and technique, you can slowly add new challenges to help your body move better and handle whatever life brings.
You can move beyond the basics by moving sideways, changing your speed or angles, adding pauses or pulses, including controlled rotation or anti-rotation, adding balance challenges, or combining an upper-body move with a lower-body hold. For example, you can pause at the bottom of a reverse lunge while doing a biceps curl or shoulder press, or try lunges in different directions.
Focus on building a strength habit that helps your body handle real life and that you can keep up during busy times, travel, changes in your body, and as you age, instead of just aiming for perfect-looking exercises. If you can keep lifting, balancing, climbing, and moving confidently as you go through life, you are building strength that lasts longer than any fitness trend.
Is your strength routine working for you?
Questions to ask yourself to see if your routine is working for you:
- Is it helping you build or maintain muscle?
- Does it challenge more than just how much weight you can lift?
- Does it improve your balance, core strength, mobility, confidence, and everyday function?
- Does it support your sleep, recovery, and stress levels?
- Does it leave you enough energy for the rest of your life?
- Can you still see yourself doing it years from now?
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