Potential for Gross Muscle Hypertrophy in Older Men

The time course of strength gain with respect to the contributions of neural factors and hypertrophy was studied in five young men and five older men during the course of 8 weeks progressive strength training. Young and old men showed similar and significant percentage increases in strength. However, the neurophysiological adaptations in response to the training were quite different. Increases in maximal muscle activation (neural factors) played a dominant role throughout the training for old subjects, while young subjects showed strength gains due to neural factors only at the initial stage, with hypertrophy becoming the dominant factor after some 4 weeks of training. Our data suggest that the effect of muscle training in the old may entirely rest on the neural factors presumably acting of various levels of the nervous system which could result in increasing the maximal muscle activation level in the absence of significant hypertrophy.