Tips for Talking to Older Parents About Aging Muscle Loss

Your parents took care of you. Now that they’re getting older, you want to return the favor by helping your aging parents take care of their own health and keep them active, strong, and mobile in their golden years. But talking to your parents about muscle decline can be difficult.

“The dynamic of having your kids tell you what to do, or what you should be doing, is not always well-received,” says Dan Ritchie, Ph.D., co-founder of the Functional Aging Institute.

In this guide, you’ll learn tips for talking to aging parents about strength and mobility, with insights from Ritchie and from scientific research that’s explored what works—and what doesn’t—when it comes to motivating older adults to exercise.

Why Fitness Matters for Older Adults

Strength training and cardiovascular exercise are crucial for healthy longevity: People who exercise are less likely to suffer a fall,^[1] the cause of 3 million trips to the ER and 32,000 deaths among older adults each year.^[2] Exercisers who have a higher VO2max, an indication of cardiovascular fitness, live longer^[3]: In one study that followed men for 46 years, each unit increase in Vo2max was associated with a 45-day increase in length of the subjects lives.^[4]

Strength training is also a critical component of healthy aging, with studies showing that greater muscle strength is strongly predictive of longer lifespan and improved functional independence, regardless of other health factors. Declines in muscle mass and strength are closely linked to increased risks of frailty, disability, and early mortality, making strength training an essential strategy for maintaining both physical and metabolic health in older adults.^[5]

This matters because your older parents (and you, if you’re over 40) are losing muscle mass each year. Starting around age 40, adults suffer from age-related muscle loss, stripping away around 1 percent of total muscle mass each year. By the time we reach our 60s, this loss can add up to 30 percent of our original muscle mass gone, putting us at risk of sarcopenia.^[6]

Tips for Talking to Aging Parents About Strength and Mobility

While you may take longevity and health seriously, charts and lists of benefits often aren’t enough to motivate our parents to exercise. A 2024 research review that analyzed 37 studies on exercise adherence and motivation in older adults found that even when aging people understand and appreciate that exercise will help with their overall health and longevity, it doesn’t mean they’re more likely to move.^[7]

Health facts may not work

“I can quote research studies on sarcopenia and osteoporosis and fall statistics and all these health parameters, but the truth is, if you haven’t cared about this for the last 20 years, you’re not all of a sudden going to start caring [in your 70s],” Ritchie says. “Exercising just for health doesn’t motivate many people, even young people.”

Instead of focusing on benefits and statistics, Ritchie says, start the conversation with your aging parents by not talking about muscle loss or fitness at all. Focus on their quality of life, their vision for the coming decades, and what they’d like to do during that time.

“Talk about what they like to do and want to do. I like taking walks. I like going birdwatching. I like traveling. I like spending time with my grandkids. I like living in my own home,” he says.

Link their goals to physical fitness

Armed with these “wants,” you’ll be equipped to talk to your parents about what they need to do to continue living this way for decades to come: “If you want to stay in your own home long-term and not ever have the conversation about moving into a facility, you have to be able to do your own laundry and carry your own groceries and do household tasks. And the only way you’re going to stay strong into your 80s and 90s is to do strength training.”

What to Say to Help Your Parents Stay Active as They Age

Even if your aging parents are open to exercising more, they may hesitate when it comes to strength training. For many, the idea brings up real concerns about safety and injury, especially if they’ve never tried it before.

Other beliefs they might express are actually masking their true feelings, he says: Sometimes, older adults are afraid that they’ll look foolish, or be treated like a child at the gym. Freeing them from these beliefs can be a gift for elderly parents, allowing them to focus on their health instead of their fears.

Here are three common barriers that older adults often express, along with some tips for helping aging parents feel more positive.

“You need to put yourself into the head of a 74-year-old person who hasn’t been in a gym in 20 years, if ever,” Ritchie says. “They are intimidated. They don’t want to be made a fool. And they don’t want to be treated like a little old lady or man, because they don’t think of themselves that way.”

What you can do: Offer to help them find a local trainer, coach, or class that has experience with people their age.

“Even better is a group training program with one or two sessions per week [with people their age] … you just show up, and the coach tells you what to do and teaches the exercises,” Ritchie says. This type of group will also help build camaraderie and community, which helps with exercise adherence.

This statement is often made by older men, Ritchie says, and is a version of “I’ll never be what I was in my prime.”

What you can do: Drive home that strength training for older adults isn’t about recapturing who they were at 30, or even 50. It’s about being the best and most capable version of themselves at their current age, and enabling all of the activities they hope to continue as they age.

In this case, they may mean what they say. A fear of injury is a common barrier to physical activity in older adults, according to research studies.

What you can do: Help research activities and locations where their physical activity will feel safe, and where the trainers and staff have experience working with older adults.

Getting Help: Finding Doctors and Friends to Talk to Aging Parents About Exercise

Even with the best intentions, you may not be the best messenger for talking with your parents about exercise. Parents may be resistant to having their kids tell them what to do, insisting that they’re fine without exercise.

If you’re concerned this might be an issue, call in the experts. Start, if you can, with your parents’ doctor: In a research review of motivators that help older adults exercise, support and advice from a physician were key motivators in getting elderly people to start and adhere to exercise programs.^[8]

In addition to exercise, their physician may be able to help them build a longevity plan that includes manageable changes to their diet and supplement regimens that support their healthspan and their new exercise habits.

Urolithin A supplements like Mitopure®, for example, have been shown to improve muscle health in sedentary older adults.^[9]

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If the doctor’s not an option, try reaching out to one of your parents’ trusted friends who is more active. Ask them to broach the subject with your parents, or even to invite them to participate. Social support has been shown to be a key driver of physical activity for older adults^[10] and provides bonus mental health benefits.^[11]

Wrapping Up: It’s OK to Fail

Talking to aging parents about strength and mobility gently, and motivating with empathy, may help them exercise more, improve health outcomes, and help them live better for longer. But it also may not work.

“At the end of the day, they have to want it for themselves,” Ritchie says. “We can make recommendations and find experts. You can do your homework and find the best personal trainer for older adults in your market. You can even pay for it. All of that may not be well-received if they’re not interested.”

Motivation, Ritchie says, may start from the outside, but it ultimately must manifest from within. And for some older parents—and younger people—it won’t click.

If that happens, he says, you may need to accept it: One of the reasons you want your older parents to age well is to preserve your relationship. And pushing too hard in this conversation may cause a rift that sabotages that.

Try talking to them gently, using the tips provided above. Appeal to what they like to do. But your aging parents are still adults. You can give them tools, but it’s up to them whether they decide to use them.