Older adults: how many sets to build strength?

As we age, we tend to lose strength, balance and muscle mass, which unfortunately lead to a decline in quality of life, potential loss of independence, increased risk of falls and death.

Strength training is a powerful tool to delay those effects and to keep us physically young. Designing an effective training program for older adults involves choosing an appropriate dose (number of exercises, sets, reps, rest periods, tempo, loads, etc).

In that sense, a big question to be asked is: how much exercise should older adults do, in order to improve their levels of strength and muscle mass?

To shed light into this question, a group of researchers conducted a Systematic Review and Meta Analysis last year to compare the effects of single vs multiple sets performed per exercise on muscle strength, size and functional capacity of middle-aged and older adults (1).

Studies that investigated participants for 3 months or more were included. 15 studies were selected, involving a total of 430 participants, 58-70 years old, the vast majority women. They were not doing any strengthening exercises prior to the interventions.

The studies selected had around 8 exercises per training session. The workouts of the participants who did 1 set per exercise were 22 min long on average, while the multiple sets workouts were 47 min or so.

For the upper body, there were no significant differences between groups, they both increased their strength at about the same rate. For the lower body, on the other hand, doing more sets led to increased strength gains.

Based on that, it seems that single sets are sufficient to build strength for untrained older adults, especially for the upper body.

That being said, it’s important to mention that the programs had around 8 exercises per session. So even those doing only one set, were doing a total of eight sets per training session. And those doing multiple sets were doing an average of 24 sets per session, which actually may be too much. As we always say, more does not always mean better.

So if you are an older adult thinking about starting to strength train, good news: you can start with a small dose and still build strength and muscle mass. Are you going to need more volume after a while?

I think that’ll be up to you to decide. Doing strengthening exercises 2-3x/wk for 30 min might be enough for you to get strong enough to do everything you want in your day to day life, but if after a few months of training you feel like you’ve reached a plateau, then it may be time for more.

Remembering that “more” can come in different forms. Could it be more exercises or sets? Definitely. But it also could simply mean more complex exercises or more loads. As always, consistent training is key for success!

Will

1: PMID: 36307745