Bottom line - true or false? The notion that you can't get stronger if you're past the 60-year mark is flawed. The common understanding that you'll have a significantly harder time to actually increase your total muscle mass and not "just" your strength, on the other hand, appears to be accurate. The signficant local increase in vastus lateralis CSA (Figure 2) does yet indicate that it's not impossible to grow even at the age of 65+ years (keep in mind, though, the subjects were previously more or less untrained!).
Nevertheless, in general, the study appears to suggest that young men are more likely to literally "grow stronger", while older men tend to draw on improvement in the mind-muscle connection, when it comes to lifting higher weights.References:
- Häkinnen, et al. "Similar increases in strength after short-term resistance training due to different neuromuscular adaptations in young and older men." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2014). Publish Ahead of Print.
