Thoughts from the Dance Floor: Why Muscle Matters More As We Get Older
There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently — muscle.
Not in the bodybuilder, six-pack, lifting-enormous-weights sense. I mean the muscle that quietly helps us get through everyday life.
The muscle that gets us out of a chair without thinking about it. Carries the shopping in from the car. Helps us climb stairs, catch ourselves if we trip, get up from the floor, lift a suitcase, play with children and grandchildren, and keep doing all the ordinary things we probably take for granted.
Because as we get older, maintaining our muscle becomes increasingly important.
And the good news is that we can do something about it.
We naturally lose muscle as we age
From around our 30s onwards, we gradually begin to lose muscle mass and strength if we're not doing enough to maintain it. This tends to accelerate as we get older, particularly later in life.
The age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and function is often referred to as sarcopenia.
But I think there's an important distinction to make here.
Some change with age is normal. However, becoming dramatically weaker and less capable isn't something we simply have to accept without question.
Our bodies respond to what we ask them to do.
If we regularly ask our muscles to work — through resistance exercise, walking, dancing, carrying, pushing, pulling, squatting and generally staying active — we're giving them a reason to stick around.
And that's why maintaining muscle isn't really about how we look.
It's about how we live.
Muscle is your body's support system
We sometimes think of muscles simply as the things that make us strong, but their role is much bigger than that.
Strong muscles support our joints, help us maintain posture and allow us to move confidently and efficiently.
They're involved every time you change direction, step over something, reach into a cupboard or get out of a car.
And there's a lovely knock-on effect.
When we feel physically capable, we're often more likely to keep doing things.
We walk. We travel. We go out. We dance. We garden. We take the stairs. We say yes to things.
That ability to remain physically independent is one of the biggest reasons I think muscle deserves much more attention as we get older.
Strength and balance go hand in hand
Balance isn't just about being able to stand on one leg.
Good balance involves your brain, eyesight, inner ear, joints and muscles all communicating incredibly quickly with one another.
Imagine you slightly misjudge a kerb.
Your body needs to react in a fraction of a second. The muscles in your legs, hips and core help stabilise you and hopefully prevent that little wobble from becoming a fall.
So when we work on strength, we're also helping to build the physical capacity that supports balance.
This is one of the reasons exercises involving the legs and hips are so valuable as we get older.
Squats or sit-to-stands, for example, might not sound particularly exciting — but they train one of the most useful movements we perform every single day.
What about agility?
Agility can sound like something that belongs on a football pitch, but we use it all the time.
It's simply our ability to move and change direction efficiently and safely.
Think about turning quickly because someone has called your name, stepping sideways to avoid something on the pavement or changing direction in a busy shop.
Dance is actually a lovely way of practising this.
In Zumba and Zumba Gold, we're constantly changing direction, transferring weight from one foot to another, moving forwards, backwards and sideways, coordinating our arms and legs and responding to music.
We might think we're just dancing to a great song.
Meanwhile, our bodies and brains are doing an enormous amount of work!
This is where resistance training comes in
Cardiovascular exercise is hugely important, but as we get older, I think it's also important that some form of resistance exercise is part of the picture.
Resistance training simply means asking your muscles to work against resistance.
That could involve dumbbells, resistance bands, gym machines or your own body weight.
It doesn't have to mean lifting enormous weights.
In my Lift & Laugh® classes, for example, we work on strength alongside balance, mobility, flexibility and coordination. The exercises are designed around the sort of physical abilities that help us in everyday life.
That's the bit I love.
We're not training simply to become better at exercise, we're training to become better equipped for life.
And dancing absolutely has a role too
Zumba and Zumba Gold aren't replacements for dedicated resistance training, and I think it's important to be clear about that.
But they offer something else that's incredibly valuable.
Dance-based exercise keeps us moving.
We're repeatedly transferring our body weight, using our legs and core, moving through different planes, changing direction, coordinating movements and working on cardiovascular fitness.
It can also help us maintain something that's surprisingly easy to lose when we stop using it — confidence in movement.
And there's another rather important advantage which is it's fun, it makes you feel good.
Because the most scientifically perfect exercise programme in the world isn't particularly useful if you hate it so much that you never do it.
Finding movement you genuinely enjoy makes it far more likely that you'll keep doing it.
Muscle matters for our bones too
There's another important reason to keep challenging our muscles as we age.
Our muscles and bones work together.
Weight-bearing activity and resistance exercise place controlled stress on the body, which helps provide the stimulus our bones need to maintain strength.
That's particularly relevant as we get older, when maintaining bone health becomes increasingly important.
So when we're working on our muscles, we're not working on one isolated part of the body.
We're supporting a whole system designed to keep us moving.
It's never just about weight
This is also why I think our conversations around health need to go beyond the number on the bathroom scales.
Two people can weigh exactly the same and have very different amounts of muscle, strength and physical capability.
As we get older, I'd much rather see us thinking about questions such as:
Can I get out of a chair easily?
Can I carry my shopping?
Can I climb a flight of stairs?
Can I get down onto the floor and back up again?
Do I feel steady on my feet?
Can I keep doing the things I enjoy?
Those are incredibly meaningful measures of fitness.
You don't need to suddenly become a gym person
If you've never done resistance training before, none of this means you need to rush out tomorrow and start lifting heavy barbells.
Start where you are.
Walking, dancing, resistance bands, light weights, bodyweight exercises, gardening, carrying shopping and structured strength classes can all form part of an active lifestyle.
If you're new to exercise or have an existing medical condition or injury, getting appropriate professional advice before starting something new is always sensible.
But don't assume that getting older means you should stop challenging your body.
Quite often, it's the opposite.
We need to keep giving our bodies reasons to stay strong.
My thought from the dance floor...
The older I get — and the more people I work with — the less interested I am in exercise being about trying to make our bodies look a certain way.
I'm much more interested in what our bodies allow us to do.
I want to be able to dance.
To travel.
To carry things.
To get up from the floor.
To move confidently.
To stay independent.
To keep saying yes to life.
And if maintaining our muscle helps us do all of that for longer, then perhaps strength is one of the best investments we can make in our future selves.
Muscle isn't just about being strong.
It's about staying capable.
And that's something worth holding on to.
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