Longevity without hype: Why muscle strength is crucial for healthy ageing

Cold baths, dietary supplements, biohacking: Anyone looking into longevity will quickly come across numerous promises for a longer and healthier life. When doing so, an essential foundation is often overlooked: our musculature. Because what is crucial is not only how old we become, but above all, how long we remain physically capable, mobile and independent.

What role do muscle strength and regular exercise play in this – and how can we maintain both in the long term?

Living longer or staying healthy for longer?

Longevity means having a long life. But there is more behind the term than the desire for the longest possible life.

In research, a distinction is made between our lifespan and our healthspan. While lifespan describes the total duration of life, healthspan stands for the years of life that we spend as healthily as possible and without major limitations – in which our quality of life, therefore, does not decrease for health reasons.

Quality of life here means above all remaining mobile, resilient and as independent as possible, whether when travelling, hiking, playing sport or simply in coping with everyday life. This is exactly what healthy ageing is about.

And our musculature plays an important role in this.

Why muscle strength is a key to healthy ageing

Our muscles do far more than enable us to move. They stabilise the body, support our joints and are involved significantly in numerous metabolic processes. With increasing age, however, muscle mass and muscle strength can decline. This process begins gradually and can impair our physical performance and independence in the long term.

It is not just a matter of how much muscle mass we possess. What is most crucial is what our muscles can achieve: Can we get up the stairs without any problems? Can we carry heavy shopping? Do we find it easy to get up from the floor or to cover longer distances on foot?

What sounds self-evident at first is actually an expression of a complex interplay of muscle strength, balance, flexibility and coordination. The good news: Our muscles can continue to be trained, even in old age. Regular and adapted strength training can help to maintain or improve muscle strength and physical performance.

Exercise, strength and recovery: It is the interplay that counts

If you want to stay healthy and active for as long as possible, you do not need a complicated longevity programme. It is much more important that you combine different forms of physical activity. Because each type of activity makes an important contribution to your health in its own way:

• Endurance exercise strengthens your cardiovascular system and improves your physical resilience.
• Strength training challenges your muscles and helps you to maintain strength and physical performance over the long term.
• Balance and coordination support you in moving safely and in a controlled manner.
• Flexibility helps you to maintain your range of motion and perform everyday movements more easily.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also recommends that adults carry out muscle-strengthening activities on at least two days per week. Training that combines strength, balance and functional movements becomes increasingly important in later years.

Recovery is just as important as exercise. Because physical adaptations require not only training stimuli, but also sufficient recovery. This includes regular sleep, quieter days between intensive training sessions and active recovery, for example through walks or light exercise.

A balanced diet, social contacts and medical check-ups also contribute to staying healthy for as long as possible.

The most important insight: More is not automatically better. The decisive factor is a good balance of movement, training and recovery that can be integrated into your life over the long term.

What role can EMS play in your muscle health?

If you want to maintain your muscle strength over the long term, you must challenge your muscles regularly. However, not everyone can or wants to complete an extensive training programme several times a week for this purpose.

This is where electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can offer a supplementary option. During EMS training, the muscles are activated additionally by electrical impulses. In combination with targeted exercises, a training stimulus is created that challenges the muscles.

EMS is, therefore, neither a miracle cure for a longer life nor a substitute for regular exercise. Rather, it can be an additional building block within a balanced training plan.

Scientific studies on whole-body EMS provide evidence that this form of training can influence muscle strength and muscle mass positively in older people. The extent of the effects depends, among other things, on the group of people studied and the training protocol used.

Conclusion: Ageing healthily begins with what we do regularly

Longevity does not have to be complicated. The habits with which you do something for your health over the long term are much more important than the next health trend.

There is no single perfect programme for this. The decisive factor is to find an approach that suits your capabilities, interests and lifestyle habits – and which you can maintain over the years.

EMS can be a useful addition in this regard. Not as a shortcut to a longer life, but as an additional way to train your muscles in a targeted manner.

Because ultimately longevity is not just about adding years to life, but about adding as much life as possible to the years.

Did you know? Using the SYMBIONT Hybrid model you can also continue your training at home and integrate it flexibly into your everyday life.