My perspective on strength training for seniors changes each year. Over the last sixteen years I’ve been a senior I’ve learned something new about exercise and fitness everyday. Admittedly, when I started prioritizing strength training, my motivation was to keep a trim body to not look so old. Now I strength train for health reasons. I don’t want to lose anymore muscle than is inevitable.
But as any aging senior will tell you, the challenges to maintain levels of everything shift with each year! Sure, it would be nice to lose fat and gain the trim muscular shapes of youth. But the biological realities are that we lose muscle with each year of aging even when we’re active. In spite of this, it pays off to work at strength training to minimize this muscle loss, no matter what.
Strength Training When Weak or Ill
For my husband, who’s been an athlete all his life, his motivation was to keep up his strength, and to maintain his competitiveness in sports, especially compared to others his age. Today, he exercises gently to minimize the loss of strength from chemotherapy. A different goal for sure, but one that will pay off when he finally achieves remission.
We wrote about our fitness journeys in our book War on Aging a few years ago, proclaiming that when seniors make fitness a priority, they don’t look look anything like their ages, nor do they experience a lot of chronic degenerative illnesses that are common to aging. Fortunately, being fit and healthy when one does come down with a serious illness plays a large part in how severely the disease strikes and contributes to quicker recovery or remission. This has played a key part in Rob’s treatment for multiple myeloma. His cancer numbers are descending into the normal ranges, and we hope to achieve remission.
Back to Basics Strength Training
This week I stated rereading a book published in 2006 called Strength Training for Seniors: How to Rewind Your Biological Clock, by Canadian fitness trainer and physical therapist, Micheal Fekete. This expert has included all the reasons exercise is important for aging well, but also a lot about lifestyle factors, motivation and examples of how to go from a beginner to competently fit. I’ll repeat the book blurb here and then I want to highlight why I found his fourteen-year-old book relevant for all seniors at any age today. It’s been helpful to me.
Regular exercise can reduce a person’s biological age by 10 to 20 years, and the key to exercising effectively is maintaining and increasing strength. A higher level of strength also improves immune systems, helps prevent age-related diseases such as diabetes and osteoporosis, lowers stress, and increases mental acuity. Written by a master athlete over 50, this accessible book offers specific exercises for improving health and fitness, tips on maintaining and increasing mobility and motor skills, nutritional advice, strategies for stress management, and worksheets for personal strength training schedules.
Now 2006 isn’t that long ago, but in a world of social media full of trending diet and exercise fads, it seems ages ago. It’s not at all out of date, it’s back-to-basics information for people of all ages. It isn’t wrapped up in any current jargon, just scientific evidence, stories of successful aging seniors, and photos and drawings that do a good job of entry-level positions and forms for total fitness.
New Thoughts on Strength Training
What I’ve learned about strength training for seniors is that it isn’t a straight line curve going from beginning levels of fitness to more advanced. If you were to trace a line from where I started working out as a senior and where I am today, you’d find a line that looks more like shark’s teeth. It’s up and down. The line would reflect periods of surgeries, recuperation and rehab, illnesses and recovery, pandemic restrictions, travel and moving dates, and hospitalizations of one treasured husband. Sometimes shark’s teeth, sometimes roller coaster.
The line representing senior fitness levels doesn’t always achieve an ever-increasing peak of strength. It varies for body parts. But like everything in a senior’s world and time-line, it doesn’t ever stop. It’s either climbing, staying the same, or going downward. We know there’s an end point even though most of us manage with a smile, humor and denial.
That’s what authors of fitness books forget when they inspire seniors with things like: “You will build muscle quickly and be healthier and stronger. Set your goals, check them off, just do it.”
Strength Redefined
While I agree, they aren’t aging seniors. Things (life!) become more challenging and complicated. One word can save us from excuses: persistence. No matter what, do what you can. There’s always a way to exercise your body to minimize loss of strength. Not easy but possible. Don’t let the realities of aging let you fall into the trap of using age as an excuse.
Maybe we need to look at “strength” and be more realistic. If you’ve fallen out of the habit, it’s okay. Start back with the basics and do what you can. Do something everyday until you get back your enthusiasm. Stay in the game, even if you change the rules to suit your current situation. You are worth it!
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