#591: Maintaining Functional Capacity with Age – Brendan Egan, PhD
Sigma Nutrition Radio
Danny Lennon
4.8 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Maintaining the ability to carry out everyday tasks and live independently is often described as a cornerstone of healthy ageing. But what actually happens to muscle strength, power, and functional ability as we get older? And how inevitable is their decline?
At what point do changes in muscle function really begin to matter for day-to-day life? Is loss of strength an unavoidable consequence of ageing itself, or does it reflect something more modifiable? If declines are not fixed, what kinds of training or lifestyle interventions genuinely make a difference, and how strong is the evidence behind them?
In this episode, exercise physiologist Dr Brendan Egan examines these questions through the lens of both epidemiological data and controlled training studies in older adults. What do we learn from short-term resistance training interventions lasting just a few months? Do the gains persist once supervised training ends? And what does this tell us about the practical challenges of maintaining functional capacity over the long term?
The conversation also explores the idea of "use it or lose it" in muscle function, the role of resistance training in extending healthspan, and how exercise programmes can be designed to support independence later in life. Ultimately, the episode asks a simple but crucial question: what does the evidence actually say about staying strong, capable, and functionally independent as we age?
Dr. Brendan Egan is an Associate Professor of Sport and Exercise Physiology the School of Health and Human Performance at Dublin City University. Currently, he is Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Science and Health.
Timestamps
- [03:49] Understanding functional capacity
- [05:56] The importance of muscle strength and mass
- [14:09] Epidemiology and strength training
- [25:07] Concurrent training in older adults study
- [31:05] Barriers to strength training in older adults
- [34:18] Misconceptions about older adults and exercise
- [39:13] Exercise snacking and SBAE
- [51:04] Key ideas segment (Premium-only)
Links & Resources
- Go to episode page (with links to studies)
- Join the Sigma email newsletter for free
- Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium
- Enroll in the next cohort of our Applied Nutrition Literacy course
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 591 of the podcast. My name is |
| 0:07.2 | Danny Lennon. You are very welcome to the show. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking to Dr. |
| 0:13.0 | Brendan Egan on what will be his third episode of the podcast. Dr. Egan is an associate professor |
| 0:19.2 | of sport and exercise physiology at Dublin City University, |
| 0:23.1 | and in general his research looks at skeletal muscle function and adaptations across the life course |
| 0:29.6 | with a range of different populations. |
| 0:32.1 | His research group has performed human trials on both acute and chronic interventions for a range of different outcomes |
| 0:39.4 | that relate to some degree of performance, both physical and cognitive, looking at also recovery |
| 0:45.3 | and adaptation. In particular, his group has done some really nice work looking at exercise |
| 0:50.9 | interventions in older adults. In particular, as they were going to mention a controlled trial that they did, |
| 0:57.3 | actually doing a really nice intervention over a 12-week period with a group of older adults. |
| 1:02.6 | And then they did a 12-month follow-up of seeing after the trial what had happened |
| 1:08.1 | and using some really nice qualitative data collected through interviews with |
| 1:12.6 | those participants to see some of their experiences in that follow-up period. |
| 1:17.4 | And so we're going to get into that as well as more broadly the concepts of physical function, |
| 1:23.3 | healthy aging, etc. |
| 1:25.6 | And so hopefully you will really enjoy this conversation. If you are a |
| 1:30.1 | Sigma Nutrition Premium subscriber, you will be able to get a set of detail study notes to |
| 1:35.2 | accompany this episode, which will go through everything that is mentioned throughout it in a bit |
| 1:39.9 | more detail as a way for you to go a bit deeper or to revise over what you are about to listen to. |
| 1:46.0 | And also in addition, you will get our key ideas segment that will play after this interview |
| 1:50.7 | is over. For those you're listening on the free public feed of the podcast, if you're interested |
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