Protein after lifting helps older adults walk faster

Gait speed is one of the most telling measures of function in older age: how fast a person walks reflects muscle strength, coordination and overall vitality. Resistance training is the established tool for preserving these qualities, and protein supplementation is often added on the logic that training stimulus plus building blocks should beat stimulus alone. Whether that combination actually moves gait speed more than resistance training by itself, and whether the timing of the protein matters, is the question this meta-analysis set out to answer.

The authors searched PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and SPORTDiscus for randomised controlled trials comparing protein supplementation combined with resistance training against resistance training alone or with placebo. Eighteen trials with 1,147 older participants qualified. Gait speed results were pooled as standardised effect sizes, and the team ran subgroup analyses, meta-regression and sensitivity checks to test how robust the overall finding was and which factors shaped it.

The combination of protein and resistance training significantly improved gait speed compared with training alone, with a pooled effect size of 0.52. The subgroup analyses produced the most practically interesting result: the significant improvement appeared only in participants who consumed their protein after the resistance training session, where the effect size rose to 0.90. The pooled result held up when individual studies were removed one at a time and when smaller studies with large effects were excluded, though the trials varied considerably in how big a benefit they found.

This extends the established case for resistance training in older adults by suggesting the nutritional context around the session influences a functional outcome, not just muscle size measures. The timing finding is intriguing because the broader protein-timing literature in younger lifters has often found total intake matters more than the clock; here, in older adults and for gait speed specifically, post-training consumption looked meaningfully better. Because it comes from a subgroup analysis with substantial disagreement between trials, it needs confirmation in trials designed to test timing directly.

If you are an older adult who strength trains, or you support a parent who does, this is a reason to think the protein around those sessions is contributing to real-world function, not just gym numbers. Walking speed is the kind of outcome that predicts independence, and it moved here. The timing signal favouring protein after training is worth knowing about, while remembering it is the least certain part of the finding.