Now, before you get mad – “old” is subjective. That’s why I put “Old Folks” in quotations. As I have gotten older, I realize that what I thought old was when I was 16 is well under the age I am now. Needless to say, I guarantee whatever age you are reading this, you are that many years young.
If you’ve been following Steel in any fashion for a few weeks, you know I just got out of the woods with a lot of angry women. I wrote a Strength Training letter titled “Strength Training for Old Ladies”, and some of them did not appreciate it – at all. Regardless, many of our now-clients loved it and wanted to train with us because of it. People either loved it and thought it was funny or hated it and resented me for it.
So, I figured I would give some of my best tips and call it “Strength Training for Old Folks”. If you consider yourself “old” – which it is a spectrum – this could be beneficial for you.
Things to Consider When You Are Starting Strength Training as an Older Person
- Stimulus to Recovery
- Recovery Capacity
- Exercise Selection
- Programming
- My Advice
Before you read ANY further, you are only as old as you allow yourself to feel. What better way to feel young than to train your body and get lean, strong, and healthy?
Stimulus to Recovery
This concept is true for EVERY age – 22 to 92 and anywhere in between. You always want to find a balance between the stimulus and your recovery capacity. This is what gives your body the best chance to achieve the results you are wanting.
Stimulus is just how hard or how long you work out. The more intense your workout, the more results you will get to a point. Don’t miss that, intensifying your workout only gets greater results to an EXTENT. This is known as the Law of Diminishing Return
Law of Diminishing Return:
- Your 1st workout might provide you 1 unit of progress
- Your 2nd workout that week would provide .67 units of progress
- If you do a 3rd workout, then you might see .33 units of progress
- So, you are still gaining progress as you go, but it is less overall. If you bumped that up to 6 workouts a week then you may have 2.5 units of progress overall, but you receive less per workout.
Your progress chart will start off going up as you increase sets and workouts, but eventually it will taper off and then start to dive down.
If you are a professional athlete or someone who is trying to get as large as possible, you want to toe that line of doing the MOST you can and still being able to recover. If this is you, you want to be in the middle of that chart.
Most people can get amazing results with being a little short of the middle of the chart. We call this the 80/20 rule. 80% of your results come from about 20% of your work.
Even though those are hypothetical numbers and not exact, that is why we recommend most people Strength Train 2-3 days per week.
Recovery Capacity
There are many factors that affect your capacity to recover, and age is a major one. As you get older, you won’t be able to recover from such hard training.
You still need to Strength Train though! The importance of Strength Training and Bone Density increase with age as well which is why you need to Strength Train as you get older.
However, your recovery capacity is not the same as a 20-year-old with a part-time job that is living at home with no spouse or financial responsibility that sleeps 10 hours a day. They will recover better than someone that is say 75 and gets 6 hours of sleep.
As you get older, we encourage you to drop down your training intensity to 2 or 3 days per week. Anyone can get life-changing results with Strength Training just 2 days per week.
I love training and encourage you to do more than 2 days per week, but truthfully, 2 days of training per week is all you really need to feel and look leaner, stronger, and healthier.
Being aware of your recovery capacity will elevate your fitness journey because you will know how far to push yourself. The thing is, you can probably do almost everything you could at 30 when you are 70, but waking up the next day and feeling great isn’t going to happen as easily as it would have when you were 30.
Again, if you aren’t a pro-athlete, there is no need to toe that line of recovery and ability. Your gains will come over time, trust the process.
Exercise Selection
You want to choose exercises that let you Train Hard, Pain FREE. You want to take care of your joints. You also want to use Good Form when doing these exercises – slow and controlled down then explosive up.
You want to always be in control. You’ll be able to train longer and harder if you do the right exercises for your body with good form.
If an exercise hurts your joints, replace it with something else that doesn’t hurt. Your muscles should be fatigued and sore – so don’t take what I am saying and think you should make your workouts easier because your muscles are tired.
Programming
This takes experimentation. You have to find the right number of days your body needs to have the most effective Strength Training experience. You also have to find out if you want to do a full body workout every time or if you want to have an upper body and lower body day.
There are pros and cons to the number of days you train, and the muscle groups you divide your workouts into. There isn’t a definitive answer to which one is better, but I encourage you to experiment to see what combination your body enjoys the most.
My Advice
If you are older, if you are in doubt, start with less and add more later.
Train 2 days per week for 30 – 45 minutes. If you do this for a few weeks and you are feeling good about it, you can add more and experiment with how you like doing more.
Choose exercises that allow you to Train Hard, Pain FREE in your joints. Choose a handful, 8-10, of exercises that will allow you to train all the muscle groups in your body during the week.
Get with a professional or expert trainer. We have those at Steel Strength Training, and they are pretty awesome! They will help you choose the right exercises and set up your program in the best way.
Start on the lower end of number of sets, then increase over time.
Experiment and find out what your body responds to the best. Afterall, your fitness journey is completely unique to you, your lifestyle, and your body.
So, if you haven’t been offended yet, and have made it to the end of this blog post – THANK YOU – we want to work with you at Steel. We have the expert trainers and nutrition experts to tailor workouts to you and your body’s needs.
