As Lifetime Athletes, we recognize that regular, purposeful exercise – aka training – is critical in the pursuit of longevity and performance. The training habit supports the resilience and robustness which characterizes a Lifetime Athlete.
Most members of this community would agree that resistance training is the most important form of exercise that older humans can undertake. Not the only one, just the most important one. We certainly require aerobic fitness and mobility at a very functional level but the maintenance of strength and lean body mass is essential for aging athletes. Ideally, the motivated individual should be performing speed, power, agility, and athletic skill training in addition to resistance, cardio, and mobility work.
However, when we examine the relationship between resistance, cardio, and mobility a bit further, an interesting point reveals itself. Resistance training can be manipulated to provide (at least a baseline level) of aerobic fitness and mobility. The reverse is less true. Cardio doesn’t do much for strength and mobility, and mobility training alone contributes very little to the development of strength or aerobic fitness. Now – again – I’m not saying that dedicated cardio and mobility is not valuable or that you shouldn’t be doing it. I’m just noting that if you were forced to choose only one form of training, resistance work should probably receive your highest consideration. It will potentially give you the “most bang for your buck” in health, fitness, and performance benefits and this will empower you to keep doing all the sports and recreational activities (and simply participating in life itself) that you love in addition to training. Some people enjoy training more than others but few would disagree that it allows us to be more versatile and durable humans.
Today’s message will benefit from further elucidation. You should do your “thing.” Whatever that is, be it yoga, trail running, golf, etc. I’m not trying to dissuade you from doing so. But, in addition to your passion pursuits, the regular application of resistance training will keep your body more viable for everything you do in life, sport, and work. And, almost ironically, intelligently applied resistance training will make you better and longer lasting in your sport(s) because it creates a “body-balancing” effect while it maintains force production capacity and high metabolic efficiency. And…it helps to prevent the atrophy, weakness, and fragility which can become problematic in the aging human.
One of the beautiful things about resistance training is that it can take on many forms and be modified almost infinitely. You can lift free weights, do bodyweight or machine exercises, or use cables, elastic bands, and other implements. The sessions can be organized to emphasize absolute strength, conditioning, or muscle growth. Easily scaled to any level and crafted to fit any athletic goal. Resistance training is sooooo adaptable.
At this point I’m reflecting that most of that introductory information may have been unnecessary because it is so obvious, especially to Lifetime Athletes. Nonetheless, the older athlete, while still being a highly capable human, is a unique beast when compared to your average 20-something critter (such as many fitness influencers as well as some of the subjects used in resistance training studies). There’s just less room for error with older trainees and mistakes made with resistance training often come with significant penalties ranging from no results to injury, breakdown, and burnout. This is true whether you are a relative newbie who is beginning training at an age of 45-75, or someone in the same age bracket who’s been training a long time but is now finding that what worked at age 28 no longer works well…or at all.
I’ve got 6 tips for you today. They’re not the only ones but each of these principles is essential for the older athlete. They just might be gamechangers for you.
Tip #1: Select the exercise variations that work best for your unique body. Whether you are creating your own workouts from scratch, using an existing program, or working with a coach…selecting exercises which fit you well is especially important.
Let’s say you’re choosing a horizontal pressing exercise. You may be focusing on this pushing movement pattern or targeting the prime mover muscles (pectorals, deltoids, and triceps). You could select a barbell bench press. Or choose dumbbells, kettlebells, or a machine. Do this on an incline or a decline. Use cables or bands. Perform it unilaterally (one side at a time). From a unique developmental sequence position such as half kneeling. The list goes on.
There are a few people for whom every exercise variation seems to work exceptionally well. They exhibit perfect technique, feel an ideal “mind-muscle” connection, get a great pump, make gains in strength and mass, and never experience joint soreness or awkwardness.
Then there’s the rest of us, yours truly included. While we embrace the concept of trying all the options and attempting to achieve mastery across the board, we notice that a few of the exercise variations don’t quite feel right. They may cause clicking, popping, or even pain. No matter how we try to modify them.
There are actually legitimate reasons for these issues, and they have nothing to do with character flaws and the like. While humans are similar as a species, every individual is slightly unique with respect to bone length and diameter, articular surface (joint) shape, muscle fiber composition (although this is somewhat modifiable with training), muscle origin/insertion (the precise attachment points of muscles and tendons), and motor cortex recruitment (how you are wired and how you fire). These genetically-determined factors can cause one exercise to feel natural and another to seem quite foreign and difficult to perform. Add to all of this the potential accumulation of injury and associated dysfunction which occurs across the lifespan and can become unavoidably motion-altering (we can fix some of these problems but not all of them).
For example, one person might say that barbell bench presses bother their shoulders. Switching to dumbbells could solve this problem. Or trying pushups instead. But some people will remark that pushups irritate their wrists or elbows. We might utilize different hand placements or handles to find the “groove.” There is usually a way that we can find an effective training option for most trainees. And sometimes lots of options.
I think it’s good for almost everyone to try out a lot of exercise variations. Test as many as you like and then classify them into 3 categories. The one, or several, that feel great and which you perform in exemplary fashion. The next group are exercises you find challenging and maybe a little bit wonky, but not painful at all. You can practice to get better at them. Finally, those that just don’t feel good at all for some of those orthopedic (and other) reasons we mentioned earlier and which probably should be omitted (sometimes only temporarily but occasionally this needs to be permanent) from your repertoire. Back to the bench press example. Unless you are a competitive powerlifter whose sport mandates that you do flat bench barbell bench presses, you can select from a wide variety of exercises that do just fine in working your horizontal push pattern and training your pecs, delts, and tris.
Tip #2: Practice movement as a skill before introducing significant load. Do it well before you do it hard. That’s what she said (sorry, I couldn’t resist). All jokes aside, optimizing a movement pattern requires multiple exposures for the CNS to ingrain and smooth out the pattern. I like to say that movement is a skill which is meant to be practiced, and our goal is mastery. This is an expression of physical art and if there was an onlooker watching you train, he/she would say “Ahhhhh” in a pleasant manner as they bask in the presence of your excellence. We never want that real or hypothetical onlooker to utter a gutteral, vomitous, “BblleeaauuwwwwGgaawwdd!!” as they turn away to yack in disgust.
Seriously, though, a half dozen episodes of lightly loaded practice, spread over several weeks, allows your neuromuscular system and connective tissues to improve or even perfect your execution of an exercise. Then, and only then, is it appropriate to increase weight or resistance and eventually approach failure, such as going to a Repetitions in Reserve (RIR) of 2 with a 10RM weight. Based on Tip #1, you probably already have some go-to faves in which you can go full ham. But whenever you introduce a new move, or revisit one you have not used in a long time, work on your form first before you really try to maximize the stimulus for strength or hypertrophy.
Tip #3: Remember that intensity is key and volume is killer. We’re talking overall or total session workload here and this is where older athletes differ from young whippersnappers. Young trainees (we all enjoyed this once) are amazing because almost everything works, and they can get away with just about anything. This is not the reality for the Lifetime Athlete.
Intensity and volume definitely present a double-edged sword for Lifetime Athletes. With resistance training, once you’ve worked on your form (you can see how these tips build upon each other), it’s intensity that matters most. You simply have to go hard enough to trigger adaptation. Whether it’s a high or low rep set, we’re talking RIR of 3-2-1. This is true RIR and it takes some practice (another tip-related aspect) to really know your limits in a set. But how much hard stuff you do will probably be less than when you were younger, or especially when compared to those “not so long out of Huggies” cats in the gym.
However, there are some nuances here. Depending on where you’re at with your conditioning, and what you’re trying to accomplish in training…there can and should be some fluctuation. If you are doing very high intensity work, you’re probably going to need to use a low volume. But if your intensity is more “moderate,” for whatever reason, a moderate amount of volume (specific to YOU) may be entirely appropriate. But you should almost never try to sustain high intensity at high volumes. That only works for the young cats, many of whom are using performance enhancing drugs (PED’s), and it doesn’t even work that well for them over the long term. Intensity and volume represent the total workload of a session (or cycle). A hard workout done somewhat briefly (high intensity/low volume) represents a moderate workload. Conversely, lower intensity can be sustained for longer duration (that’s what HE said) and that still equates to a moderate workload. Let the kids have the high workload. Most can survive it, but it’s kryptonite for aging athletes. The dose makes the poison.
But there is a trap with the intensity/volume relationship, and I’ve seen it a LOT over the past 4+ decades. Many people tend to avoid high intensity work and gravitate towards doing high volumes of moderate intensity training. This is true in other forms of training as well, not just resistance work. This usually results in suboptimal fitness enhancement and mild chronic fatigue.
Much of this is inadvertent, because these athletes and fitness enthusiasts avoid high intensity work due to, not so much its effort, but its risks. They’ll say “I don’t do that (ever, as in never have, or at least not anymore) because I always end up tearing, ripping, or blowing out this, that, or the other.” On the one hand, they are totally correct in that avoiding injury is el jobbo numero uno. But they usually get hurt because they aren’t doing the training right. Harsh words I know, but bear with me if you can. High intensity training, of any type, requires thorough warmup and gradual progression. And this is even more true with older bodies coming off the couch or out of a desk workstation. But this doesn’t mean that high intensity should not be utilized. It just means that it needs to be approached very sensibly. That’s why I design the Training Tribe programming to be kind to aging bodies, letting folks “get used to” harder/faster efforts in conservative fashion. I also do the same thing with every athlete I coach in a personalized manner. I want people to get after it. But I want this to be safe, effective, and fun.
Tip #4: Take recovery seriously. The successful aging athlete has immense appreciation for recovery. The rules of biology. We don’t make ‘em, but we sure do prosper when we heed them. Because of my work, I’ve known a lot of older athletes. Not one – absolutely none – ever said they recover as well from training and competition as they did when they were younger. This is even true for those with the best genetics, low injury history, brilliant programming, and all those sassy morning routines and wellness practices. Nobody. Every single one of those people noted that they have to pay more attention to the details for recovery to be optimal, and it takes longer than it used to.
This is yet another place where these tips blend together. Hammering back to back, high workload days, can work for younger athletes and this approach is often utilized successfully. If I try to choose a kind descriptor, this practice is unwise for the older athlete. It works less and less over time until it eventually doesn’t work at all.
After a substantial workout or competition, a Lifetime Athlete is best served by good nutrition, sleep, and supportive practices like tissue work, sauna, etc. And light, recovery based training. And often multiple days before the next substantial output.
You really don’t want to sacrifice freshness in the pursuit of fitness. You may have created or been issued or acquired a masterpiece of a program. But if it says to go hard on a day when you know you need more recovery, relax and postpone the effort for a day or two. You might even modify the program to “open up” these recovery windows. They actually don’t give out plaques with your name on it for suffering through all the workouts and promoting a chronic inflammatory state. They give gold medals to winners. People who know when and how to go hard. When it counts. And when to go easy.
Tip #5: Find the balance between “same-same” and different. In this case, I’m talking about doing the same exercise, the same way, all the time vs. selecting a totally different exercise and changing it up. I can’t say “It’s all good” but it’s mostly good. In other words, only the extremes of this distinction may be problematic. If you do the same workout (same exercises, same order, same sets and reps, same loads) for years, you’re eventually going to become stale and see gains plateau and even some imbalances develop. But on the other hand, if you “ADHD” your sessions to the point that they are drastically different every workout, you never get the chance to practice and become really efficient at any of the movements.
Obviously, there’s a middle ground here and it’s indeed a broad one. Keep some movements and methods consistent across a mesocycle or two. Let’s just say that’s for a couple months. T2 does all that for you if you are a member in The Lifetime Athlete App. Next, introduce new exercises on an occasional basis and make subtle changes in your session structure to both keep stimulating the body and to prevent the mind from experiencing boredom. How this comes together is definitely personal. I’ve had some athletes I’ve coached who only needed, and wanted, a very small amount of variation in order to be highly successful. And others who responded much more favorably to a more dynamic program design and workout experience.
If you’ve been feeling a little flat, not seeing the progress you expect, or just aren’t enjoying your workouts as much as you had been…shake it up a bit. But if your training always feels (and is) “will-nilly” and all over the place, consider setting up some structure and following it for a while.
Tip #6: Embrace patience as more than a character trait. View it as a nonnegotiable in the lifetime training process. This definitely applies to all of the other tips and I believe it is rooted in confidence. Over time, you learn the exercises which work best for you and you get really good at performing them. You know when to get after it and you know how to take it easy. You don’t get too stressed out about the natural ups and downs of being a dynamic human BEAST. You relax and go with the flow when that’s necessary. If you get knocked back a tad by a cold or a minor injury, you don’t worry because you know you’ll rebound soon. And you Kick Ass, not just in sports but in all areas of your life, with a frequency much higher than those who do not choose The Lifetime Athlete way.
Thank you for joining me today. I hope all of your training, resistance included, gives you the wellness and performance you seek and deserve. If I can be of service to you in this quest, become a member in The Lifetime Athlete App and sign up for a Personal Coaching Consultation.