Welcome back to Get Fit Guy.

Coach Kevin Don here.

This week, I want to cover a topic that I see come up often in fitness and strength-related forums, as well as my own clients.

Can an older trainee build muscle?

Well, firstly, let's recap why one would want to build muscle mass

irrespective of being an older human or not. My first episode here is a new get-fit guy.

I took some time to define what fitness is and what the word means. Fitness isn't about

losing weight unless your weight is causing serious health

issues. It's not about whatever fad diet you're reeled in by or the latest supplement that a single

corporate funded study done on seven white mice tells you that you need to add into your morning

pillbox rotation. No. Instead, fitness is the ability of an organism to optimally perform tasks related to survival

and doing so in the absence of disease, illness or injury.

From the moment we're conceived, we're all on board an unstoppable ride towards the as yet, not totally understood, great beyond.

As we plur along this relentless path, our cells age, the wheels just start to fall off.

One of the greatest predictors of morbidity and mortality is sarcopenia, which means death of the flesh.

It describes the loss of our muscle mass. This can be quite problematic in terms of interacting

with our own user interfaces of reality, such as unscrewing lids on jars, getting up out of her

favourite chair, or climbing in and out of the bath. Loss of muscle mass also means

loss of balance, coordination, accuracy, agility, strength, speed, power and so on. So why is it that we

experience this loss of muscle mass as we age? Well, it's down to what we call anabolic resistance.

Anabolism, a Greek word with the root meaning to build up, is where we're in a state optimally suited to building new tissue.

Catabolism is the opposite state. Aging populations, also known as the entire human race by nature of

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