Doing light weightlifting with a band that restricts blood flow for six weeks can make both slow and fast muscle fibers in older people grow bigger by about 20%, even without heavy lifting.

Even though the muscles got bigger after the exercise, the number of special repair cells and nuclei inside the muscle fibers didn’t go up — meaning the growth happened without these typical building mechanisms.

At first, your muscles might actually get a little smaller from this kind of training, but after doing it again later, they grow bigger than before — the growth just takes time to show up.

After six weeks of light weightlifting with blood flow restriction, older adults got stronger and could do more repetitions before getting tired.

This kind of light exercise with a blood flow band might be a quick and easy way for older people to fight muscle loss and stay stronger, without needing long or heavy workouts.

If older people who didn’t get stronger from doing just one set of weight exercises start doing four sets instead, they’ll likely grow bigger muscles in their thighs after 10 weeks of working out twice a week.