How to Lose Fat but Keep Muscle in Old Age: Guide
Losing weight without losing muscle can be tough to do as you age.
There’s a type of exercise that will help solve this problem.
You do NOT have to lose valuable muscle in order to lose unhealthy excess fat. (more…)
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Are Biceps Curls Over-Rated? How Valuable Are Arm Curls?
Just how important are biceps curls? We see them everywhere for fitness ads, in fitness articles, posters at gyms, ads for protein products, etc. They’re everywhere.
But does this mean that curling a dumbbell or barbell is among the most valuable strength training exercises you could do?
Frankly, biceps curls are over-rated. But there’s several reasons for this.
Easy Pose for Photographers’ Models
If you scroll through photo libraries, whether the images are free or licensed, you’ll see many images of arm curls if you do a search on “strength training” or similar.
It’s easy to have a model, including ones who don’t train at all, hold little dumbbells in a curling position.
Plus, photographers already know that the biceps curl is a premier show move in the marketing world.
Mimics the “Make a Muscle” Command
hutterstock/Nolte Lourens
When someone asks you to “make a muscle,” what do you do?
You flex the biceps, of course! This can be done in more than one position.
All of those positions flex the biceps, such as keeping the upper arm down and bringing the forearm up against the abdomen, then flexing.
Or, one or both upper arms are raised to shoulder height, parallel to the floor, with the forearm bent to 90 degrees to flex the biceps.
This is such a common response to “show me your muscles” or similar prompts, that photographers relentlessly use it in their work — and writers and bloggers gobble up these images.
Who flexes a quadricep when asked to make a muscle?
I’d be lying if I said I never did this, as I am proud of my quads!
But back to the biceps: They are the easiest muscle to show a flex with.
Thus, it stands to reason that it’s the most popular pose.
Biceps Are Easily Visible
This muscle group is more commonly visible than any other muscle.
Even in wintertime when everyone’s wearing long pants, many still wear short-sleeve shirts, easily exposing a prominent biceps group.
Heck, you can even easily spot a well-trained biceps under a long sleeve form-fitting shirt.
Arm Curls Are Easy to Do
Among the first exercises that beginners head for at the gym is the standing biceps curl.
It feels easy for them, and there’s a dumbbell weight amount for every level of beginner.
However, just because this exercise seems easy doesn’t mean that there can’t be errors in form.
Many beginners swing their whole body into arm curls when the weights are too heavy.
Or, they flare their upper arms out (they should be against their sides).
I’ve seen people doing arm curls with a crooked body, tilting to one side.
Nevertheless, the arm curl comes across as very rudimentary to beginners, and this has appeal.
Easy to Feel
When someone wants to feel a muscle on a muscular person’s body, where’s the first — and often the only — place their hand goes? You know the answer.
You can flex the quads, but not as well as the biceps. And it’s harder to give a visible flex to the deltoids and chest.
None of these reasons, though, mean that it’s crucial to perform a lot of arm curls to gain strength and fitness.
In fact, isolating the biceps is very important to bodybuilders — way more than to anyone who just wants to be strong, fit and preserve muscle mass in older age.
Going overboard with curling exercises could put the elbow tendons at risk for chronic inflammation.
Have you seen people at the gym with wraps around their elbows? That’s due to tendonitis!
How well do biceps curls work?
Biceps curls do strengthen the biceps, but that’s a pretty small piece of the overall picture.
As we get older, the bigger concern is maintaining as much total muscle mass, strength, balance and physical ability as possible.
Spending a big chunk of your workout doing curls doesn’t do much for those things. The much better choices are the deadlift and pulling movements, which do engage the biceps.
This doesn’t mean you should skip the biceps curls.
There are many ways to isolate this muscle group:
- Standing or seated standard dumbbell curl
- Incline curl
- Spider curl
- Concentration curl
- Preacher style (with E-Z bar, dumbbells or machine)
- Cable and tension band variations
- Even kettlebells can be used.
It’s actually a versatile exercise due to all these variations.
There’s nothing wrong with them if you want “guns” or wish to complement your compound routines.
The problem is when curls become a major part of a workout while more useful exercises get pushed aside.
Think about what you actually need your muscles to do in everyday life.
For younger and middle age adults, that could be picking heavy items from the floor, lifting heavy things into and out of a car trunk, hoisting heavy things around in the yard or at the workplace, carrying kids, etc.
A routine of deadlifts, squat variations, kettlebell swings and pulling movements will better serve your body (along with pressing movements) when compared to biceps isolating movements.
For older people, getting up from a chair, climbing stairs, carrying groceries, lifting something off the floor, getting in and out of cars, and staying steady on your feet all require several large muscle groups working together.
For them, it’s again the squat variations and other classic compound exercises to get a lot of bang for one’s buck.
Compound (multi-joint) movements involve more muscle at once and more closely resemble the kinds of movements you actually need to do in everyday life, regardless of age.
The Tendons
Repeatedly hammering the same isolation movement can irritate the elbow and the tendons around it, especially if you’re using heavy weights or doing a high number of repetitions.
So if your main goal is a buff strong physique or fighting age-related muscle loss, don’t get distracted by the mirror muscles.
You can still get a good-looking biceps with back exercises that use the biceps as secondary movers: narrow-grip pull-down, seated row, bent-over dumbbell or barbell row, chin-up.
A few curls are fine. Just keep your regimen in perspective, and don’t confuse a good-looking biceps pump with a well-rounded strength workout if your goals are more about overall strength, fitness and anti-aging rather than having a bodybuilder’s look.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness, where she was also a group fitness instructor, she trained clients of all ages and abilities for fat loss and maintaining it, muscle and strength building, fitness, and improved cardiovascular and overall health.
Top image: Magnific/YuliiaKa
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How to Eat to Prevent Brain Tissue Loss
Like all organs, the brain changes for the worse with age. But there’s a way to eat to help slow the loss of crucial brain tissue.
A diet that combines Mediterranean-style eating with foods that are linked to lower blood pressure may help slow some of the physical changes that happen in the brain with age.
Research in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (2026) found that people who followed the MIND diet more closely experienced less loss of brain tissue over time.
The association was especially noticeable in grey matter, which is involved in memory, learning, decision-making and processing information.
People with higher MIND diet scores also had less enlargement of the brain’s ventricles, the fluid-filled spaces that become larger as brain tissue decreases.
What Is the MIND Diet?
The MIND diet stands for Mediterranean-DASH diet intervention for neurodegenerative delay.
It combines features of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.
The diet encourages green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, berries, nuts, whole grains, fish, beans, olive oil and poultry.
Of note: You’ll want to eat vegetables fresh from the produce section rather than in canned form.
As for nuts, this doesn’t mean cashews coated in sugary chocolate or chocolate-covered peanut clusters. Ideally this means nuts in unprocessed form, or at least, minimally salted.
MIND also calls for limiting butter and margarine, cheese, red meat, pastries, sweets and fried fast food.
As discouraging as these rules sound, keep in mind that you can still eat your favorite “bad” foods — but make a point to LIMIT them.
Earlier studies have linked the MIND diet with better cognitive health.
Its connection with actual physical changes in brain structure has been less clear in those past studies.
Researchers Followed Brain Changes
The researchers studied 1,647 middle-age and older adults from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort.
Participants were an average of 60 when the study began. They received health evaluations every four to eight years and began having MRI brain scans in 1999.
The scans were repeated every two to six years, allowing researchers to follow changes in brain structure over time.
Diet information came from food frequency questionnaires completed during health examinations between 1991 and 2001.
Each participant had at least two MRI assessments between 1999 and 2019.
None had evidence of stroke or dementia when their first MRI was performed.
The average MIND score was just under 7 out of 15. A higher score indicated closer adherence to the diet.
- People with the highest scores were more likely to be women and college graduates.
- They were also less likely to smoke or be obese.
They had lower rates of several health conditions associated with brain health, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Higher MIND Scores and Brain Volume
Over an average follow-up of 12 years, participants experienced the brain changes normally associated with aging.
Total brain volume, grey matter, white matter and hippocampal volume decreased.
Meanwhile, cerebrospinal fluid and ventricular volumes increased.
White matter hyperintensities, which appear as bright areas on MRI scans and can reflect tissue damage, also increased.
However, people with higher MIND diet scores showed slower grey matter loss.
For every three-point increase in the MIND score, grey matter loss was 0.279 cm³ per year slower.
The researchers calculated this as about 20% less age-related decline, equivalent to approximately 2.5 years of delayed brain aging.
Ventricular enlargement was also slower. A three-point increase in MIND score was associated with 0.071 cm³ per year less ventricular expansion.
The researchers estimated that this represented about 8% less tissue loss, or approximately one year of delayed brain aging.
Berries and Poultry
Eating more berries was associated with slower increases in ventricular volume.
Poultry was also linked with slower ventricular enlargement and slower grey matter loss.
Sweets showed the opposite pattern. Higher consumption was associated with faster ventricular enlargement and greater loss of hippocampal volume.
Fried fast foods were also associated with a larger decrease in hippocampal volume.
The researchers suggest that antioxidant-rich foods such as berries could help reduce oxidative stress, while protein sources such as poultry may help limit neuronal damage.
They also point out that fried fast foods often contain unhealthy fats and other compounds that may contribute to inflammation and vascular damage.
Not Every Finding Fit the Pattern
Higher whole-grain consumption was associated with faster grey matter and hippocampal volume loss, as well as faster ventricular enlargement.
Cheese produced a different result.
People who ate more cheese had slower declines in grey matter and hippocampal volume. They also had less ventricular enlargement and fewer white matter hyperintensities.
The researchers say these findings show that individual foods do not necessarily behave exactly as expected based on the overall diet pattern.
Older Adults Showed Stronger Associations
The overall relationship between MIND diet adherence and brain structure remained after additional analyses.
The associations were stronger among older participants.
That could mean the diet is particularly relevant for people whose brains may be more vulnerable to faster age-related atrophy.
The associations were also stronger among people who were physically active and those who were not overweight.
The paper says this raises the possibility that diet and other healthy lifestyle habits may work together in supporting brain health.
The Study Has Limitations
This was an observational study, so it can’t prove that following the MIND diet directly caused slower brain aging.
Diet was measured with food frequency questionnaires, which depend on participants accurately remembering what they ate.
The researchers also could not completely rule out mild cognitive impairment at the first MRI assessment.
Changes in eating habits over the years and genetic factors could also have affected the results.
Nevertheless, the researchers say the findings add to evidence that the MIND diet may be a useful brain-healthy eating pattern and could have a role in efforts to slow some of the brain changes associated with aging.
