Many evenings during the week, you’ll find our family playing basketball in the driveway — parents vs. kids.
Something I started to notice earlier this year, as I went head-to-head against my 14-year-old son Gus, was that while he was becoming more explosive with his athletic moves, I had gotten significantly less springy.
While he could turn on a dime to make a quick cut to the basket and effortlessly jump for a rebound, I found myself relying on my larger body to slowly muscle into position for a shot.
I was definitely still a lot stronger than Gus — I just couldn’t turn that strength into force as quickly as he could. It felt like I had lost the gear for it.
We talk a lot about strength and muscle gain here on AoM. If you’re looking to get bigger and stronger, you’ll find plenty of articles on those topics.
But an area of fitness that we’ve overlooked, but I’m now starting to appreciate more and more as I move into middle age, is muscle power.
What I was experiencing in my basketball match-ups against Gus was a diminishment in this capacity.
Researchers have given the age-related loss of muscle power a name: powerpenia. And growing research shows that it’s a key predictor of whether you’ll be able to pick up your grandkid, climb a flight of stairs, or hoist your keister off the toilet when you’re 70.
Here’s what you need to know about powerpenia — and how to resist it.
The Muscle Decline Trifecta: Sarcopenia, Dynapenia, and Powerpenia
You’ve likely heard of sarcopenia — the loss of muscle mass with age. It typically begins around age 40 and accelerates after age 60. Muscle mass typically declines by .5-1% per year after 40. Sarcopenia leads to frailty in old age, which makes it hard for old people to get out of chairs, let alone get up from the floor if they fall down.
Then there’s dynapenia — the loss of muscle strength. Sarcopenia contributes to dynapenia, but there are also other things going on that lead to age-related declines in muscle strength. Mostly it comes down to our neuro-muscular system becoming less efficient at activating our muscles. Muscle strength declines along a similar trajectory as muscle mass, with a loss of 0.5–1% per year after age 40.
Both sarcopenia and dynapenia can be mitigated and even reversed with regular strength training, which is why we’re big fans of weightlifting.
In 2024, researchers introduced a third area of concern: powerpenia — the loss of muscle power.
Muscle power is the ability to display strength quickly; it’s explosiveness. Examples of muscle power in action include jumping for a rebound, sprinting, and punching. But muscle power doesn’t just come in handy in sports. Muscle power is also what lets you:
- Sprint to catch your kid running into the street
- Jump out of the way of an object about to hit you
- Lift something quickly
- Bound up stairs two at a time
- Catch yourself during a fall
Powerpenia may be the new age-related muscle concern on the block, but it seems to be the most influential factor in the maintenance of our physical vitality. In fact, a recent study found that power — not strength — is the best predictor of whether older people are able to successfully navigate the activities of daily living.
The interesting thing about muscle power is that it actually drops faster than muscle size and strength — as much as 2–4% per year after 40. That means by your 60s or 70s, you might still look pretty solid and even test decently on a strength test, but you’ve lost the explosiveness needed to stay agile and independent.
Why the rapid decline? Three big reasons:
First, there’s the loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for generating quick bursts of strength and speed, and they naturally atrophy faster than slow-twitch fibers as we age and don’t call upon them.
Second, there are the changes in our tendons due to inactivity. If you don’t regularly do activities that require you to display strength quickly, your tendons become stiff and less efficient at storing and releasing energy, making explosive movements harder to perform. The degradation of tendon health from disuse explains why a lot of middle-aged guys injure themselves when they decide to play pick-up basketball for the first time in a decade. It’s why I got a bad case of hamstring tendonitis a few years ago when I decided to do a sprint workout after years of not sprinting.
Finally, as we age and don’t call upon our fast-twitch muscles for explosive activity, our brain and nervous system become less efficient at telling our muscles to contract quickly.
How to Fight Back Against Powerpenia
After my lackluster performance in basketball games against Gus and after reading the research on powerpenia, I decided I needed to do something to counteract the decline of muscle power that comes with middle age.
Fortunately, it’s not that hard to do.
Here are some things I’ve started to incorporate into my physical training to fend off powerpenia:
Plyometrics
Plyometric exercises develop explosive power by training your muscles and nervous system to react quickly.
You don’t have to devote an entire workout to plyos. You can add one or two plyometric exercises to your regular strength-training routines. Here’s what I’m doing:
Before my first lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercises:
- Power Skipping. Perform a regular skip, but jump and lift your knee as high as you can. I do this for 15 yards, three times.
- Box Jumps. Stand in front of a box or other suitable platform. Try to find a box that’s at least 18″ off the ground. Jump onto the box. To avoid injury, step rather than jump down from the box. Do three sets of five jumps.
Before my second lower-body workout of the week, I do the following plyos:
- Broad Jumps. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, swing your arms back, bend your knees, and then explosively jump forward as far as possible, using your arms to help propel you. Land softly with your knees slightly bent to absorb the impact and maintain balance. Do three sets of five jumps.
- Pogo Hops. Stand with your feet together and begin jumping straight up as high as you can. When you land, begin the next jump as quickly as possible. Do three sets of ten hops.
Before my first upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:
- Plyometric Push-up. Assume a normal push-up position. Lower yourself to the floor. With explosive force, push off the floor with enough force that your hands leave the ground. Do three sets of five push-ups.
Before my second upper-body workout of the week, I do the following plyometric exercise:
- Overhead Medicine Ball Slam. Raise the medicine ball overhead and slam it down as hard as you can. Do three sets of ten slams.
As I continue with these plyos, I’ll probably rotate some of them out and substitute some of the plyometric exercises we’ve written about here into my routine.
Hill Sprints
Hill sprints are one of the most potent weapons against power loss. They engage fast-twitch fibers better than flat-surface sprints while also reducing impact on your muscles and tendons, thus reducing the likelihood of injuries. Besides training for power, hill sprints are a great HIIT exercise.
Find a 20–30-yard hill. After a warm-up, do 4–6 sprints up the hill at 80–90% effort. Walk down slowly to recover. Rest 1–2 minutes between sprints. You just need to do this once a week.
For more tips on doing safe and effective sprints in general, read our Grown-Up’s Guide to Sprinting.
If you’re looking for another powerpenia-fighting cardio/HIIT exercise, jump roping is a great one. We’ve got a whole guide to that, too.
If it’s been a long time since you did the kind of explosive exercises outlined above, you may be concerned that trying them will get you injured. Start slowly and gently, to be sure. Doing things like stepping down from the box after your box jumps and sprinting uphill will help lessen the risk of injuries. And you can do things like broad jumps and hill sprints on softer surfaces like grass.
But you do need to steadily ease into these movements to avoid a kind of catch-22: avoid plyometric exercises out of fear of injury, and you actually increase the risk of injury when life suddenly demands an explosive movement.
The only way to safely rebuild this capacity is to train it — gradually and consistently. And once you have it back, don’t stop. Keep training these movements into old age, until the day you’re truly no longer capable of doing them.
Here’s to Powerful Aging
I’ve been doing these power exercises for about a month now, and I’m already noticing a difference.
I’m still not as explosive as my teenage son, but I can better shift myself into that gear when we face off on the driveway court.
And knowing that training for power will keep me strong and capable as I age — not just in the game, but in life — is the real win.
