How your joints and muscles feel at 60 or 70 isn’t decided at 60 or 70. It’s shaped by decades of small, repeatable habits, most of which cost nothing and take minutes.
The encouraging part is what the research keeps confirming: joints and muscles respond to how they’re used at every age. Regular physical activity is one of the most protective things you can do for the musculoskeletal system, while long-term inactivity is a major contributor to chronic disease and decline.
None of the habits below is dramatic on its own. Together, and sustained, they give your body its best chance of keeping up with the life you want to live.
1. Move Every Day, and Vary How You Move
Joints stay comfortable in the ranges they regularly visit, and cartilage has no direct blood supply, it relies on movement and loading to stay nourished. Long sedentary stretches are the quiet enemy.
The habit: some movement every day, and variety across the week. Walk, garden, swim, climb stairs, get up from your desk every 30 to 60 minutes. Contrary to the old fear, appropriate exercise doesn’t wear joints out. For knees with osteoarthritis, for example, Cochrane’s review found exercise can reduce pain and improve function.
2. Strength Train at Least Twice a Week
Muscle naturally declines from our 30s onward unless it’s actively maintained, and muscle is what protects joints, absorbs impact and keeps you independent later in life. Exercise guidelines recommend strength work for all major muscle groups at least two days per week, at every age.
It doesn’t require a gym. Squats to a chair, push-ups against a bench, carrying groceries with intent, resistance bands at home. What matters is that muscles are regularly challenged, and that the challenge gradually grows.
3. Keep Load Changes Gradual
A recurring theme across injury research: tissues cope well with load they’re conditioned for and poorly with sudden spikes. The habit is simple. When you start something new or come back from a break, build up over weeks, not days, whether it’s running, renovating or a new sport.
4. Prioritise Sleep
Sleep is when much of the body’s tissue repair and hormone regulation takes place, and consistently short sleep leaves muscles and tendons recovering on a deficit. Seven to nine hours, kept reasonably consistent, is one of the most underrated joint and muscle habits there is.
5. Eat to Support Your Tissues
No single food protects joints, despite what supplement marketing suggests. What the evidence supports is simpler:
- Enough protein to maintain muscle, spread across the day, especially as you age
- Calcium and vitamin D for bone health, through diet and sensible sun exposure
- A generally balanced diet with plenty of plants, which supports tissue health and helps manage inflammation
- Staying hydrated, since muscles and joint structures are largely water
Body weight also plays a role, particularly for knees and hips, which carry several times your body weight with every step. Research shows that for people carrying extra weight, even moderate weight loss combined with exercise reduces knee joint load and improves pain and function. If this is relevant to you, it’s best approached gradually and with support, not through crash dieting.
6. Limit the Habits That Work Against You
Two worth naming plainly:
- Smoking is associated with poorer bone density, slower tissue healing and higher rates of tendon problems and back pain
- Regular heavy alcohol intake affects sleep quality, recovery and bone health
You don’t need perfection. You do need the trend heading the right way.
7. Listen Early, Act Early
The habit that ties the rest together: treat small, recurring signals as information. A joint that swells after certain activities, a tendon that’s stiff every morning, a niggle that returns weekly, these are early conversations your body is trying to have. Adjusting load, building strength or getting assessed at that stage is consistently easier than treating an established problem.
When to Get Professional Input
It’s worth an assessment if:
- Joint or muscle pain keeps returning despite sensible habits
- Stiffness or swelling is concentrated in one joint
- Pain is changing what you’re willing or able to do
- You want to start strength training but aren’t sure where to begin safely with an existing issue
See your GP promptly for joint pain with significant swelling, redness and warmth, fever, or morning stiffness that regularly lasts beyond 30 minutes, as these can occasionally indicate conditions needing medical management.
How Professional Support Can Help
- Physiotherapy: Assesses your movement and builds a strength and mobility program suited to your age, history and goals
- Chiropractic care: Assesses joint mobility through the spine and limbs
- Remedial massage: May help ease muscle tension that builds with daily demands
- Clinical Pilates: Develops strength, control and mobility together, scaled to any starting point
- Dry needling: May assist with persistent muscle tightness
Long-term joint and muscle health is built on habits, but the right habits differ from person to person, which is why an individual assessment comes first.
Building Long-Term Health at Next Phase Injury Therapy
At Next Phase Injury Therapy in Yagoona, our physiotherapists, chiropractors and remedial massage therapists don’t just treat injuries, we help people build routines that support their long-term joint and muscle health.
We work with you to:
- Assess where your body is starting from
- Build sustainable strength and mobility habits into your real week
- Address the small issues early, before they interrupt the life you want to live
Your Future Body Is Built Now
The best time to start looking after your joints and muscles was years ago. The second best time is this week.
Explore our physiotherapy, chiropractic, remedial massage and clinical Pilates services, or book an appointment with Next Phase Injury Therapy. We’re open 8am to 8pm, seven days a week. Yes, even Sundays.
References
- Booth, Frank W., et al. “Lack of Exercise Is a Major Cause of Chronic Diseases.” Comprehensive Physiology, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, pp. 1143–1211, https://doi.org/10.1002/cphy.c110025.
- Garber, Carol Ewing, et al. “Quantity and Quality of Exercise for Developing and Maintaining Cardiorespiratory, Musculoskeletal, and Neuromotor Fitness in Apparently Healthy Adults: Guidance for Prescribing Exercise.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, vol. 43, no. 7, 2011, pp. 1334–1359, https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e318213fefb.
- Fransen, Marlene, et al. “Exercise for Osteoarthritis of the Knee.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, no. 1, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004376.pub3.
- Messier, Stephen P., et al. “Effects of Intensive Diet and Exercise on Knee Joint Loads, Inflammation, and Clinical Outcomes among Overweight and Obese Adults with Knee Osteoarthritis: The IDEA Randomized Clinical Trial.” JAMA, vol. 310, no. 12, 2013, pp. 1263–1273, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.277669.
- Fragala, Maren S., et al. “Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement from the National Strength and Conditioning Association.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 33, no. 8, 2019, pp. 2019–2052, https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003230.
Information on this page is general in nature and is not a substitute for individualised advice from a registered health practitioner. Our practitioners are registered with AHPRA.