As people get older, their leg muscle power slowly gets weaker — and it starts to drop faster after age 60. A long-term study found that this loss speeds up with age and could be a sign of overall physical decline as we get older.

As people get older, their muscles lose power — but how that happens changes over time. Younger adults mostly lose strength, while older adults lose both strength and speed, meaning different things go wrong in the body as we age.

As people get older, their legs get weaker much faster than they lose muscle mass — so something else besides just losing muscle must be making them weaker.

Older people who start with less muscle in their legs, weaker legs, or are older in age tend to lose more leg strength over three years—even when you account for each factor on its own.

As people get older, men tend to lose leg strength about twice as fast as women each year.

Older adults around age 72 who have fallen before aren't any weaker in their knee muscles than those who haven't fallen — so knee strength might not help predict who's more likely to fall.