Physical Therapy and Strength Training

Strength training is a key component to living a long, healthy life. It helps with strength of course, building muscle mass, improving bone density and more. It’s known that individuals will start to see a decline in muscle mass as early as their thirties and a 80-year-old man will have about 40 percent less muscle tissue than he did when he was 25-years-old.

Those numbers are important to consider with your ability to function later on in life. Without preserving or at least slowing the loss of lean muscle mass as you age, your ability to function and perform the activities enjoy will most likely diminish as well.

According to Andy Galpin, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton, we lose muscle strength about two to three times more quickly than we lose muscle mass. And we lose power (strength x speed) two to three times faster than we lose strength. This is because the single biggest change in the aging of muscle is the atrophy of our fast twitch or type 2 muscle fibers.

We all know that it takes awhile to improve our muscle mass, strength and power but the gains can be lost fairly quick due to an injury or period of inactivity. Sometimes it is hard to get started in the first place due to an injury, pain, etc. that is impacting an your ability to move and function.

That’s where we come into play to help guide you back into a strength training program. We help people everyday bridge this gap and guide them through a personalized hands-on and movement based physical therapy approach that traditional physical therapy models lack. Also, we are trained in higher level strength movements to help you make the transition seamless to make life-long changes.

Resource: Attia, Peter. Outlive. Penguin Random House USA, 2023.

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