Strength Training as you Age: 3 Things to Consider

1.     What you are physically able to do when you’re 20 will be different than what you can do at 40, 60, 80 and onward.  The level of activity you do when you’re younger does contribute to what you’ll be able to do when you’re older, but you can’t avoid aging.  You can only slow it down.  Attempting to do what you did when you were 20 will be a disappointment for you.  If you want greater success avoid creating situations where you are more likely to fail because of ego.  Listen to your body and make decisions that will help you achieve your goals in an appropriate timeframe.

2.     Recovery is important at any age.  As you get older it becomes even more important.  A teenager can get away with a high training frequency and less recovery work.  In our adult years that ratio of training frequency to recovery activities begins to shift.  When you reach later life recovery work will dominate over training frequency.  No matter how much you want it to be different. 

3.     Train smarter, not harder.  This is true no matter what age.  Lately I have noticed some patterns in training trends.  The first pattern is that professionals are recommending very high training frequency (x per week), high training loads that people obviously can’t handle and maintain form (weights too heavy), unbalanced exercise selection (ex. 4 days with squats or lunges), and poor understanding of exercise technique.  It’s like watching a train-wreck.  If you want to improve your strength training at any age you need blinders to ignore everything you see on social media while you learn the basics first in how to train.  The basics are deciding on training frequency, exercise selection, and proper technique for those exercises before you even begin to load them. 

I have started working with 4 people that fit this category in some regard within the last few weeks.  It’s unfortunate because it could have been avoided.  They received some regrettable advice.  The health and function of our body matters a lot.  It’s our lively hood, our life, and our future.  Training decisions have an immense impact on this, and it isn’t appreciated or understood by the masses in the fitness industry.  Training doesn’t have to be perfect. Develop an awareness of the fact that what you do in training can have great benefit while also having the possibility to do great harm.