Research

Hormonal

Older adults exhibit blunted muscle hypertrophy in response to resistance exercise training due to synchronous deficits in long-term muscle protein synthesis and ribosomal biogenesis, rather than just acute signaling issues.

If you are older, expect your muscles to grow slower than when you were young. This is a biological reality called 'anabolic resistance,' driven by hormonal changes and cellular efficiency, not a lack of effort. Focus on consistency and strength gains, which older adults can still achieve significantly, even if muscle size increases are blunted compared to younger individuals.

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In response to 6 weeks RET, we found blunted hypertrophic responses with age are underpinned by chronic deficits in long-term muscle protein synthesis. We show this is likely to be the result of multifactorial deficits in anabolic hormones and blunted translational efficiency and capacity.
Matthew S. Brook et al. · The Journal of Physiology · 2016

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with objective measures (D2O labeling, biopsies) comparing young vs. old, though sample size is small (n=20).

Source

Synchronous deficits in cumulative muscle protein synthesis and ribosomal biogenesis underlie age‐related anabolic resistance to exercise in humans

Matthew S. Brook et al. · The Journal of Physiology · 2016

DOI 10.1113/jp272857

rct · n=20Cited 199×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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