For how we live.
In a 12-month trial of 89 older adults with vascular cognitive impairment, strength training did not slow whole-brain white-matter lesions overall — but it did in women, and in two specific brain regions.
The muscle-building literature converges on roughly 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight a day, with gains flattening above that — a target well clear of the deficiency floor most official figures quote.
No. When sets are pushed close to failure, light and heavy weights build muscle about equally. The one thing heavier loads reliably win is maximal strength.
The whole scare traces to one 2009 study that measured a hormone, not hair. In 2025, the first trial to actually assess hair follicles found no difference between creatine and placebo.
You cannot burn fat off a specific area by exercising it. When researchers trained a single limb or drilled abdominal muscles for weeks, fat came off the body generally, not the spot being worked.
Heavy loads drove significantly greater one-rep-max strength than light loads in a 21-study meta-analysis, while size gains were similar. A trial found strength maxed out at low volume, the main driver of growth.
Even frail people in their 80s and 90s roughly doubled their strength in ten weeks of training. But muscle size barely moved — the honest expectation is a big gain in function and a modest one on the scale.
Weekly scans found thigh muscle grew measurably within about three to four weeks, once early swelling was discounted. A biopsy study found real fibre growth appeared only later, at ten weeks.
Branched-chain amino acids can nudge muscle protein synthesis and modestly ease soreness, but they cannot build muscle on their own — and a complete protein does everything they do and more.
Progressive resistance and impact training raised bone mineral density in trials, and a landmark study found heavy lifting safe for women with low bone mass. Calcium and vitamin D did not lower fracture risk.
A 2016 meta-analysis found training a muscle twice a week beat once. A larger 2019 update found the edge vanished once weekly volume was equated — leaving frequency as a scheduling choice.
A meta-regression found each extra weekly set added about 0.37% more growth, a graded but flattening curve. A separate trial found strength barely moved between one, three and five sets.
Sore muscles signal unaccustomed or eccentric effort, not how much you gained. In one 10-week study, peak muscle damage was unrelated to hypertrophy; growth tracked the later, calmer weeks.
A kilogram of muscle burns about 13 calories a day at rest — far less than the fitness-marketing figure implies. But resistance training does nudge resting metabolism up, by roughly 96 calories a day in a meta-analysis.
Training light loads with a limb cuff grows muscle about as well as heavy lifting, trials show. For maximal strength the evidence is mixed, and heavy weights may still edge it.
A 2024 meta-regression found strength gains barely track how close you stop to failure, while muscle growth rises the nearer you get. Two trials put the size gap close to zero.
Guidelines and trial evidence point to a target, not a tally: work each muscle group about twice a week and match recovery to effort. Training something every day is not, by itself, harmful.
Frailty has firm diagnostic criteria and predicts falls, hospital stays and death. It is also, unusually, treatable: resistance training raised muscle strength 113% even in nursing-home residents in their late 80s.
The training and creatine at its core rest on strong evidence. The supplement stack around them mostly doesn't — and the SARMs some users add are frequently not even the drug on the label.
A large trial in adults up to 89 found structured activity cut the risk of losing the ability to walk. In frail nursing-home residents near 90, strength training more than doubled muscle strength.
A 67-study meta-regression found muscle growth keeps rising with weekly sets, with diminishing returns. A 15-site trial of 297 lifters found stretch-position partial reps produced effects close to zero versus full range.
Pooled randomised data show incretin drugs shed lean mass in about the same proportion as lifestyle weight loss. The evidence gap is people who train seriously, and it has not been filled.
A meta-analysis of 26 trials found creatine raises serum creatinine without markers of kidney injury. Weeks earlier, a Nature Communications paper reported that supplementation promoted metastasis in mice.
A review screening 14,125 articles found evidence neither for nor against morning or evening training — only that testing and training at the same hour helps. Evening sessions may cost some sleep continuity.
Sarcopenia got a formal definition and diagnostic cut-offs. The clinical guidelines that followed back resistance exercise strongly — and are far more cautious about protein powders, vitamin D and drugs.
A 2026 meta-analysis of 86 randomised trials found body mass, waist circumference and maximal oxygen uptake still better than baseline more than six months after training stopped. Not everything held.
A meta-regression of 23 hypertrophy studies found total intake the strongest predictor and no timing effect after adjustment. A later network meta-analysis of 116 trials still favours post-exercise, narrowly.
Three cohorts, 147,374 people, 30 years and 35,798 deaths. The dose-response curve flattened above 120 minutes per week, and the cancer signal appeared at the low end, not the high end.
A panel of fitness and healthcare professionals reached full agreement on 27 medical conditions that call for caution — or, in two cases, avoidance — before starting resistance training.
A meta-analysis of eleven depression trials found an average effect below the threshold for clinical importance, with signs of bias favouring creatine. A separate review found no change in kidney filtration.
A meta-analysis of 20 trials found a two-kilogram gain in one-rep max and no effect on bone density. A small crossover trial found functional strength gains largely independent of muscle mass.