More Muscle Mass Pt. 1 - Why you need it

There’s no cute introduction for this topic because frankly, there’s even more information I could give but I will try to cut this down so the message is clear.

You. Need. More Muscle Mass.

Here are just five reasons why.

1. Metabolic Differences: Muscle requires more energy, which increases your basal metabolic rate. BMR is what your body needs from energy to keep you alive at rest - I like to explain it as the energy you would need to use to stay alive if you were in a coma. Muscle is more taxing on BMR than fat, and (with a myriad of other factors) having less muscle also makes it harder to lose fat.

2. Aging Gracefully: People joke that after 30, their body starts breaking down. Science is here to say, yes. UNLESS you fight back. On average, people lose 3-5% of muscle every decade after 30. That means if you are not actively trying to grow muscle, you will lose up to 10% of your muscle mass before 50. Female anatomy is more susceptible to muscle loss because they are usually less muscular at 30 than male counterparts, and hormone fluctuations make building muscle harder with age. Bone density, like muscle, also decreases with age, which is why falls are more dramatic for elder people. The more muscle you can keep on your body, the lower your risk of falls, and the more protected you are from fragility later in life.

3. Joint Protection: Musculoskeletal pathologies can be placed in three buckets - lack of control, lack of strength, or both. This is our bread and butter. Muscles are attached to bones via tendons across joint spaces, and act on the body by contracting and approximating the insertion to the muscles’ origin. When people have joint pain, or complaints, we look to the surrounding structures, and the adjacent joints.

4. Weight Loss: Well, body recomposition… not really weight loss per se. But now that I have your attention, striving to gain muscle is more fruitful than striving to just shed pounds off a scale. As outlined above, lean muscle mass changes the metabolic work of the body, so the more muscle, the higher your basal metabolic rate. Muscle is also helpful to improving insulin sensitivity, which can help dietary struggles and energy fueling. You have all heard it - muscle weighs more than fat! This is why we don’t care about lowering the number on the scale - and we do not want to lose muscle mass to lose weight. You will lose weight if you sit in a sauna for too long or have food poisoning. We can agree those are not healthy or sustainable options. Strive for muscle gains.

5. Post-Op Recovery: People are slowly getting more familiar with the term “prehab” - this is usually seen in individuals preparing for knee, hip or shoulder replacements, as well as ACL reconstructions or foot and ankle procedures. This is the practice of doing physical therapy before surgery to bolster the strength and awareness of the body to improve post-operative outcomes. Physical therapists have been pushing for this, as a key problem for people specifically recovering from knee surgeries is the inability to keep or mange quadriceps strength for knee extension - this will keep people more restricted in activity for longer than they want, or than their surgeon wants to see (we use Blood Flow Restriction Training when MD’s start to notice continued weakness after surgery.)

Now that you know the “WHY”, check out “More Muscle Mass Part Two” to learn the “HOW”.

If you are struggling to exercise regularly, or see progress through your current program, schedule a free discovery call here to learn physical therapy can help!