over 50

Exercises You Shouldn’t Do After 50

/ Mark A Nutting / Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve seen a number of articles that claim that there are exercises that you should not do after 40, 50, or 60. (i.e. This article on cheatsheet) I want to jump on that bandwagon (and kick everyone off)! There are NO exercises that are off-limits because of your age!

Untitled design (6)What is important to note is that with each passing year that you do nothing physical, you lose more ground on what you are capable of doing. Yet, even with the decreased abilities of a sedentary life, there are still no exercises that you should not do because of your age. What you do have to do is change how you start to do that exercise.

Options are a wonderful thing! There are a billion variations of exercises that can be done and you need to simply select the option that is closest to your current physical condition. Say you want to do back squats with weights (which I think is a great exercise), but you haven’t done them in decades, if ever. You can start with bodyweight squats. Do a number that is comfortable on day 1 and see how you feel the next day. If all’s well, move on to the next progression. Maybe that is more repetitions. Maybe it’s doing them deeper. Maybe you work on perfecting the form. Bit by bit, as you perform them better, you can add weight. What if you can’t hold on to a bar behind your head because of limited shoulder mobility? While you work on regaining that mobility, you could hold dumbbells at your sides, or in front of your body under your chin (a la goblet squats). As you regain the mobility in your shoulders, you could eventually start to put a bar on your back across the back of your shoulders (not on your neck). Et voila! You’re doing back squats with weight. To be clear, I’m not saying do back squats. I’m saying that you could safely get to a point where you could do them if you wanted to. Nothing is off-limits because of your age. You can build to being able to do almost anything if you so desire. It’s all about choosing the right progression to get you there safely and effectively.

Now, I know that you may not be aware of all of those possibilities and progressions to get you from point A to point Z (your end game). This is where getting together with a certified personal trainer might be your best bet. Look for one in your area or shoot me a message if you would like my help.

 

Good luck.

 

How Many Years Do You Have Left?

/ Mark A Nutting / 5 Comments

As a personal trainer, I’ll ask clients what their goals are and occasionally I get an answer like, “At my age, I’ll be happy if I can just go up and down the stairs without getting winded.” Then I’ll look back down at their medical history and see that they are only 52. This always prompts me to ask, “How many years do you think you have left?” Usually they will say they hope to live into their 80’s or 90’s. Well that’s thirty to forty years to go. What are those years going to look like? Are you going to spend twenty years in a walker or a wheelchair? That doesn’t sound like much fun. Just because we’ve hit 50 (or 60, or 70…) doesn’t suddenly mean that we are done, that we are no longer physical beings.

The truth is that we have been conditioned by what has come before. In our parents era, it was believed that we would lose a certain % of our muscle and flexibility and gain a certain % of fat every decade beyond our twenties. Pretty depressing. Well, the truth is that we would see those declines when we slowed down and didn’t continue to challenge ourselves physically. Think about it. We finished playing our sports in high school and college, got a 9-5 job, got home after work and just wanted to relax. As we did less, we are able to do less. It truly is “use it or lose it.” The good news is that most of what we saw as age related declines (also called sarcopenia) were because of the activity decreases and that does not need to be our fate. Whether you have been on that downward slope or just want to make sure you stay off that path as long as you can, the right exercises and diet can keep you fit and able to do what you want well into our final years.

Back to the original question, how many years do you have left? Here’s the follow up question, of those years, how many of them would you like to still be able to do what you want and enjoy? You can choose how you want those years to play out. Don’t settle for climbing stairs when you can climb mountains.

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