To live a long and healthy life, you need plenty of muscle. But we all start losing it in our 50s. Can a 60-year-old man build himself up – and maybe even get a little ripped?
I’m not good with unexpected questions. There’s always a chance I’ll blurt out something crass, irrelevant or just plain dumb. So when I was filling in the forms for some personal training and got to “Whose physique would you like to emulate?” I think I did quite well to choose “Daniel Craig at his peak”. By that of course I meant Craig’s Bond days, when the media would drool over his “enviable six-pack, bulging biceps and washboard stomach”. 007? O-O-heaven, more like! Licence to kill? Licence to thrill!
It was still a load of cobblers. How weird would it be to find yourself with a stranger’s legs and arms and torso? At 60, with hopes of making it to 100, all I really want is more muscle – and not only out of vanity. Bulking up is one of the most important things you can do to future-proof yourself. As the longevity expert Peter Attia puts it, “If you are interested in living a long and healthy life and playing with your great-grandkids someday, then muscle mass should be a priority. Never in the history of human civilisation has a 90-year-old said, ‘I wish I had less muscle.’”
