Losing Strength and Balance After 65? How the Brain Ties Them Together — Muscle IQ in Orem

You stand up from the couch and pause a second before you trust your legs. On the stairs, you reach for the rail more than you used to. Nothing hurts, exactly. It just feels like your legs and your balance are both a step behind.

Most people treat these as two separate problems: weak legs on one side, a shaky sense of balance on the other. Research suggests they may share more of a root than you would expect, and that root sits in the nervous system, not only in the muscles.

Strength Is Not Only a Muscle Question

It is natural to assume that losing strength with age is about losing muscle. Part of it is. But a 2026 personal-view article in The Lancet Healthy Longevity points out that muscle size explains only part of the strength older adults lose. Power, the ability to produce force quickly, tends to fade earlier than either size or maximum strength. The authors argue that the brain, spinal cord, nerves, and muscle all play a role. It is an expert opinion piece that pulls together earlier research, not a new experiment, and the authors say the value of their proposed measures still has to be shown.

One of the studies it draws on, from 2015, compared stronger and weaker older adults. The weaker group could not fully switch on their muscles when asked, a shortfall of about 20 percent. The part of the brain that sends movement commands, the motor cortex, also showed nearly twice as much of one type of braking signal at rest. The muscle was only part of the story. (We covered that research in Why Some Seniors Lose Strength Faster: The Brain's Role.)

Balance Is a Brain Skill Too

Balance feels automatic, but it is a constant calculation. A 2025 review describes a control center in the brainstem, the reticular formation, that combines what your eyes, inner ear, and joints are reporting. It helps set the background tone of your postural muscles, and it prepares your body a split second before you move, which may help you stay steady on an uneven Orem sidewalk.

There is an overlap here. The same wiring that sets how ready your muscles are also helps decide how steady you are. In our way of picturing it, there is a muscle tone dial that sets how ready your muscles are to work. When that dial is turned down, for any reason, strength and steadiness can both feel it.

The Encouraging Part: This Wiring Can Change

A 2024 study in The Journal of Physiology followed older adults through months of learning balance skills. With age, the brain's own braking system in the motor cortex tends to weaken, which has been linked to poorer motor control. After six months of balance training, that braking measure improved, and the people whose brain measures changed the most tended to be the ones whose balance improved the most. Two months was not enough to show a significant change. When training stopped, balance dropped faster than the brain measure did, but a year later both were still ahead of the comparison group.

One detail is worth a closer look. In that study, aging had left the brain with too little braking. The weaker older adults above showed too much of a different kind, and pain may also turn the dial down. The lesson is not that more or less is better. It is that these settings are not fixed, and they respond to the right kind of challenge.

Physical Therapy for Strength and Balance at Muscle IQ in Orem

Our evaluation starts with strength testing, because a muscle that tests weak tells us where to look. We check which muscles are turned down, what may be turning them down, whether that is pain, an irritated joint, or tissue that has stiffened, and how steady you are when your senses are challenged. We explain what we find. Then care is built around the weak link holding you back, with hands-on work where tissue has tightened and strength and balance training, including our Huber Motion Lab, that challenges the whole body. We retest as we go, so you can see whether anything changed. We see people from Orem and across Utah County. Our goal is helping you move with confidence again, whether that means the stairs, a walk along the Provo River Trail, or getting down to play with the grandkids.

You can read more about how we approach steadiness on our balance page.

Honest Limits

These studies were done in labs and mostly measured brain activity. None of them tested our methods, and age-related change is not always fully reversible. Falls and dizziness can also have medical causes, so if you have had either, tell your doctor.

Take the Next Step

We accept most insurances (DMBA, BlueCross BlueShield, TRICARE, EMI Health, Allstate).

Take control of your health today by calling Muscle IQ at (801) 310-0851 to schedule your first appointment.

Learn more at MuscleIQ.com.