Lift more weight to build muscle! Sound familiar? That’s what science has always believed was key to building muscle. Well not so says a study published in The Journals of Gerontology titled: Muscle Protein Synthetic Responses to Exercise: Effects of Age, Volume, and Intensity.

What they did was have a group of young men (average age: 24) and a group of older men (average age of 70) do either three or six sets of leg extensions. They then took biopsies of the men’s leg muscles to measure whether they were making protein. This is necessary for building and repairing muscle.

The younger group had little or no impact by doubling the sets. However the older group had greater protein synthesis when doubling the sets. Important to note is that it didn’t matter whether they were using lighter or heavier weights. The results suggest that the muscles of older men need to do more work to activate the protein synthesis in the muscles.

So what should you do? As the study suggests. Double your sets. I also read in another publication that was referring to this study and it mentioned more reps. So for myself I decided to lighten the weight and increase reps as opposed to doubling sets. It’s a time factor. For one thing I do a mix of cardio and strength. This is how I like to train. To keep the pace and timing the way I like it, doubling the sets would obviously double my overall time and workout. So I aim for 24 reps per set. As an athlete you most likely have a routine that works for you. However it may be worth working in more reps one way or the other.

As a note though: The study was only conducted on young men 18-30, and older men 65-75.

Below is a link to the published abstract.

http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/67/11/1170.abstract?sid=98a20898-f24f-4354-a495-6f1888aecad5