Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Wisdom Wednesdays: Move over muscle strength - there's a new kid on the block when it comes to longevity.

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Wisdom Wednesdays: Move over muscle strength - there's a new kid on the block when it comes to longevity. · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

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  Speaker 1: Helllly, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today we're
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: going to dive into something that I think is a
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  Speaker 1: real game changer, especially as we age, and that is
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  Speaker 1: the concept of muscular power, which I don't pronounce very well.
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  Speaker 1: That's powe R muscular power. Now, we've long known that
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  Speaker 1: VO two max, or cardio respiratory fitness is a massive
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  Speaker 1: predictor of how long we're going to live.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, it's the biggest predictor.
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  Speaker 1: And I've talked about that numerous times on the podcast,
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  Speaker 1: and it's won't be used.
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  Speaker 2: To any of our listeners.
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  Speaker 1: And numerous studies have shown that your level of fitness,
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  Speaker 1: how well your heart and your lungs work during exertion,
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  Speaker 1: is the strongest predictor of mortality. And more recently, research
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  Speaker 1: has shown it's not just about your heart and your lungs.
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  Speaker 1: Muscle size and strength also matter. And I've also done
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  Speaker 1: a podcast on that. I've talked before about hand grip strength,
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  Speaker 1: for example, is a very well validated proxy.
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  Speaker 2: For overall muscle strength and.
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  Speaker 1: Is associated with reduced risk for cardiovascar disease, metabolic issues,
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  Speaker 1: and all cause mortality. If you have good hand grip strength,
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  Speaker 1: and again it's not just about your grip. That's a
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  Speaker 1: proxy for overall muscle strength. And we know that lower
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  Speaker 1: body leg strength is also a strong predictor of mortality.
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  Speaker 1: But today I want to talk about muscular power and
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  Speaker 1: why it's an even better predictor of survival than muscle strength.
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  Speaker 1: And it's a really good study from the what's called
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  Speaker 1: the clinemex Cohort, and it was just been published in
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  Speaker 1: the Male Clinic Proceedings and the results I think are
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  Speaker 1: pretty profound. So let's talk about the difference between strength
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  Speaker 1: and power. Strength is how much force that you can produce.
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  Speaker 1: Think about your max dead lift or how tightly you
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  Speaker 1: can squeeze one of those grip dynamometers, but it is
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  Speaker 1: static and it's raw. Power, on the other hand, is
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  Speaker 1: how quickly you can generate that force. It's force time's
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  Speaker 1: velocity or force times distance divided by time.
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  Speaker 2: So it's not just how hard.
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  Speaker 1: You can lift or push or pull something, it's how
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  Speaker 1: fast you can do it.
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  Speaker 2: And here's the kicker.
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  Speaker 1: Muscular power declines even faster than strength as we age,
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  Speaker 1: and that's a problem because as you get older, everyday
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  Speaker 1: tasks like rising from mature climbing, stirs and especially stopping
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  Speaker 1: yourself from falling.
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  Speaker 2: They rely heavily.
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  Speaker 1: On muscular power, not just strength, and muscular power comes
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  Speaker 1: from those fast twitched fibers that decline quickest as we
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  Speaker 1: start to age. In fact, your fast twitched fibers started
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  Speaker 1: decline from your thirties onwards.
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  Speaker 2: So in this.
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  Speaker 1: Study, the researchers followed nearly four thousand individuals, which is
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  Speaker 1: a pretty good sized cohort. Now, they were mostly men,
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  Speaker 1: and there were ages between forty six and seventy five
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  Speaker 1: at the start of the study, and they followed them
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  Speaker 1: for almost eleven years.
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  Speaker 2: And they measured relative muscular.
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  Speaker 1: Par using an upper body rowing movement and compared it
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  Speaker 1: with relative strength using the hand grip tests. So what
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  Speaker 1: I mean by relative is they adjusted for body weight,
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  Speaker 1: so they divided the par or the strength divided by
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  Speaker 1: your body weight, so it's normalized. So it's not about
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  Speaker 1: how big or heavy you are, it's about how much
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  Speaker 1: par or strength you had for your size. And this
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  Speaker 1: is the great leveler for everybody. And what they found
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  Speaker 1: was pretty remarkable find. And as we know, strength is
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  Speaker 1: a strong predictor of mortality, but relative power was a
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  Speaker 1: much stronger predictive of mortality than strength alone, and in fact,
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  Speaker 1: for men, being in the lowest tier of muscular power
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  Speaker 1: carried nearly a sixfold increased risk of dying compared to
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  Speaker 1: those in the highest tier, and for women it was
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  Speaker 1: even higher, close to seven times the risk for those
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  Speaker 1: who had the least versus those who had the most,
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  Speaker 1: and this held up even when they controlled for things
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  Speaker 1: like age, wete to height, ratio, and chronic health conditions.
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  Speaker 1: So we've known for a while that your cardobascular fitness
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  Speaker 1: is hugely important. And we've also known that your strength,
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  Speaker 1: whether it's tand grip or leg overall strength matters, but
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  Speaker 1: how fast you can move matters more. Now why does
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  Speaker 1: this matter? So as we age the velocity component of
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  Speaker 1: muscle function, your ability to move quickly declines earlier and
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  Speaker 1: more steeply than strength does. And it makes sense when
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  Speaker 1: you think about functional decline.
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  Speaker 2: What often happens as people age.
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  Speaker 1: They struggle to get out of a chair quickly, They
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  Speaker 1: fall over because they can't regain their feet or their
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  Speaker 1: hands quickly. They then fracture a hip. And as I've
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  Speaker 1: said before, if you fracture a hip in your sixties
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  Speaker 1: or seventies, you got a fifty percent chance of being
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  Speaker 1: dead within the next five years. So par training, therefore
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  Speaker 1: isn't just for athletes or CrossFit junkies. It's a critical
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  Speaker 1: part of maintaining independence and extending lifespan. And it actually
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  Speaker 1: reminds me back of the time when I owned PTA Academy,
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  Speaker 1: personal Training Academy. We used to train personal trainers and
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  Speaker 1: certify them, and I always said, when you're training older adults,
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  Speaker 1: muscular power is the most important thing. And this has
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  Speaker 1: really been borne out by this study. Back then it
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  Speaker 1: was it was kind of more theory, but now it's
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  Speaker 1: very very clear in terms of the outcome.
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  Speaker 2: And now there's a.
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  Speaker 1: Really interesting point that the authors in the study reised
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  Speaker 1: our current definition of sarcopenia, which you'll have heard me
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  Speaker 1: talk about that age related loss of muscle mass and
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  Speaker 1: function that actually ignores muscular par.
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  Speaker 2: And that is probably a big miss.
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  Speaker 1: This paper argues that muscular par should absolutely be included
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  Speaker 1: in how we define and assess sycopenia because it's more
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  Speaker 1: closely linked to actual outcomes like falls, disability, and even death.
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  Speaker 2: So let's get practical.
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  Speaker 1: If muscular power is so important, what type of training
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  Speaker 1: should we be doing?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 1: So, This isn't just about lifting heavy weights. It's about
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  Speaker 1: moving resistance quickly right.
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  Speaker 2: And it can.
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  Speaker 1: Be a relatively heavy weight that you try to move
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  Speaker 1: as fast as possible, or it can be a lightweight
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  Speaker 1: that's moved very very quickly. Right, So you can take
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  Speaker 1: a bench press and get a really heavy weight and
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  Speaker 1: try to move those past as possible, or you can
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  Speaker 1: have that weight and really get quite explosive.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be a bench press. Great stuff
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  Speaker 2: for this.
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  Speaker 1: Is jumping squats or even skipping, and think about what's happening.
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  Speaker 1: You're generating par from your legs whenever you're skipping and
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  Speaker 1: doing jumping squats is really good.
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  Speaker 2: Medicine, ball throws, those sorts of.
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  Speaker 1: Things, and anything that's fast movement with resistance bands can
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  Speaker 1: actually be really excellent for power work because they naturally
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  Speaker 1: increase the resistance as you increase that range of motion.
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  Speaker 1: So resistance bands are actually a very safe and effective
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  Speaker 1: way to do par training. And if you're a little
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  Speaker 1: bit older, this is things like the sitt sitting stand tests,
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  Speaker 1: So how many times can you get up and down
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  Speaker 1: out of a chair in a minute. It's walking quickly
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  Speaker 1: up and downstairs, but even doing pliometrics. So if you're
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  Speaker 1: a bit older and really not that confident, just doing
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  Speaker 1: little bunny hops is really beneficial.
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  Speaker 2: That is going to develop your power.
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  Speaker 1: It's also going to help with bone density. We know
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  Speaker 1: that walking does nothing for bone density, whereas jumping is
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  Speaker 1: actually good for bone density. And then if you're a
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  Speaker 1: bit younger, and it's about then using resistance. But remember
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  Speaker 1: it's about moving that way whatever it is, reduce the
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  Speaker 1: amount and move it really quickly. And when you're doing
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  Speaker 1: a par training workout, the key is that you don't
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  Speaker 1: go to complete fatigue. You go you leave a number
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  Speaker 1: of reps left in the tank because it's really it's
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  Speaker 1: about that explosiveness that's really key. So in something up,
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  Speaker 1: this research is really pushing us to rethink how we
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  Speaker 1: assess and train for longevity. For years, it was all
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  Speaker 1: about cardiovascular fitness, then strength come into the fold, and
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  Speaker 1: now muscular power seems to be the missing third pillar
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  Speaker 1: that really ties it all together. So yes, keep doing
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  Speaker 1: your cardio, keep lifting heavy shit, but remember to move
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  Speaker 1: it quickly every.
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  Speaker 2: Now and then. That's it for this week, folks, Catch
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  Speaker 2: you next time.