Old men still have the skeletal muscle contractile function to get up and go even after they have had their leg in a cast

In this issue of The Journal Physiology Hvid et al. (2011) report some interesting experimental data which suggest, that at least for males in their 60s which nowadays can be classed as ‘young ageing’, neither age nor immobilisation are as deleterious to the contractile properties of muscle fibres as might have been expected.