Muscle health: strength, movement, and ageing well

Muscle does more than power movement. It supports strength, balance, posture, and the ability to keep doing everyday things independently — and maintaining it becomes more important, not less, as we get older.

This guide covers the basics, grounded in current physical-activity evidence.

Why muscle matters across life

From early adulthood onwards, muscle is gradually lost unless it's actively maintained. That loss can affect strength, mobility, and balance over time. The encouraging part is that muscle responds to use at any age: regular activity that challenges your muscles helps maintain and rebuild them.

How muscle is maintained

The most reliable way to maintain muscle is regular resistance activity — that is, movement that makes your muscles work against some form of resistance. This can take many forms:

• Bodyweight movements such as squats, sit-to-stands, and wall press-ups
• Resistance bands
• Weights, including everyday objects
• Activities like carrying, gardening, and climbing stairs

Health guidance generally recommends including muscle-strengthening activity on at least a couple of days each week, alongside other movement.

Getting started safely

If you're new to this kind of activity, or have a health condition, it's worth getting tailored advice. Starting gently and building up gradually is both safer and more sustainable than doing too much too soon.

For a programme suited to you, a qualified physical activity or healthcare professional can help.

What about food and supplements for muscle?

Training is what drives the change; food supports it. The single most useful thing to get right is eating enough protein spread across the day — our guide to high-protein foods covers what that looks like with everyday meals rather than powders. If you do a lot of harder or longer sessions, electrolytes and hydration explains when fluids and salts genuinely matter and when plain water is fine.

Among supplements, creatine is the one with the strongest and most consistent evidence for supporting strength and training, and our explainer sets out how to take it and addresses the common questions. Magnesium is sometimes raised in the context of muscle function and recovery — that guide is a level-headed look at what the evidence actually supports and who is likely to benefit.

It's also worth understanding the bigger picture of how your body uses energy: our metabolism guide explains why more muscle tends to raise the energy you use at rest, and why the dependable foundations matter more than any quick fix.