The Paul Roberts Guide to Safe, Strong Muscle Ups

I’m 51, I have hardly any hair and even less fashion sense, but I can do something that most gym goers of my age, often of any age, can’t: muscle ups. A well-performed muscle up isn’t just a great upper body exercise, it’s a statement. It sets you apart from the crowd.

Unfortunately, the negligent pursuit of muscle ups can very easily lead to injuries which can strip you of the ability to do any kind of training for months at a time. I found that out the hard way, in fact I’d claim it’s exactly because I got injured that I’m able to do muscle ups safely today. I’m going to share my shoulder-friendly, strength-based training approach with you in this article. You can jump straight to that if you wish, but I hope you’ll also read the intervening sections to appreciate why shoulder health should never be taken lightly.

Shoulder Tendon Injuries Are Terrible

Before we get to the training, I want to impress upon you just how limiting shoulder injuries can be. Unless you’ve experienced such an injury first hand, you have no idea of the misery it can bring. Forget upper body pushing exercises; they’re out of the question. Forget the classic lower body exercises because handling heavy discs is a no-no, and anyway that shoulder isn’t going to like the arm position for squats or taking weight in a deadlift. Even running could be off the menu due to the repetitive arm movements, and sleep is also likely to suffer, because lying on your side is a recipe for pain. What’s more, this will be your life for quite a while, because anything involving tendons heals slowly.

It’s important to realize that shoulder injuries often start small, creeping up on you slowly until it’s too late. In my case, my shoulder problem first presented as a minor niggle about four months after I’d started pursuing muscle ups in earnest. When I was throwing a ball for my dogs, I’d sometimes feel a slight twinge on the first throw. A month later, I’d get slight soreness on the first couple of reps of a shoulder press. The sore would be gone by the third or fourth rep and wouldn’t return no matter how heavy I went, so surely it couldn’t be anything serious? In retrospect, this was a classic symptom of shoulder impingement, but it was easy to ignore it, and so I did. When it later became bad enough to make me look into shoulder rehab exercises, I figured I could just include those exercises in my regular training and carry on as normal. I’d done the same with countless injuries in the past, even a bout of Achilles tendon trouble, and everything had worked out. It looked like things would play out the same this time too.

About a week later, and more by luck and momentum than strength, I managed a muscle up on rings. That was my first ever muscle up, and my last for eighteen months. As soon as I came down from the rings I knew I was in trouble. The pain was bad enough to make me accept that further muscle up training was out of the question for a while, but at least I could keep training in other ways, right? Wrong. Again and again I backed off the things that caused pain and kept going with the rest, only to lose another exercise, then another. In the end I was left with nothing but pistol squats, morale-destroying shoulder rehab with 1kg hand weights, and gentle jogging.

When it comes to shoulders, please heed this advice:

• Don’t think it can’t happen to you.
• Don’t ignore niggles. They are a sign that something you are doing, or not doing, is upsetting the delicate balance of your shoulder joint. Fix it now, or pay dearly later.
• If you do allow that niggle to develop into an injury, stop training and visit a sports physiotherapist who really knows shoulders. Then follow the physio’s advice religiously, but at the same time self-research your condition as completely as you can. This has several benefits: it allows you to perform a sanity-check on the advice you’ve been given, it may get you better treatment, because most professionals will be more motivated to help a patient who wants to educate themselves, and it will help you to continue your rehabilitation and avoid re-injury after your physio sessions have ended.
• If you’re over a certain age (let’s say over 40), be prepared to challenge any advice that you can never return to your desired training. Often this advice will be based on the average client in your age range. Would the expert still be saying “never again” if you were in your twenties? Always explore the alternatives—are there exercises you can do that will offset imbalances or other problems your training may create?

Incidentally, finding a good physio can be much harder than you might think. On my third attempt I found a physio who had looked after a national wrestling team. Unlike her predecessors who had given me a variety of exercises, she gave me just two, but scrutinized my form. Where the others had given the go-ahead to continue with most pulling exercises, she insisted on a strict six-week hiatus from all upper body exercise, save for the rehab. After already losing months of training this was not what I wanted to hear, but everything she told me checked out. I followed her advice to the letter and saw genuine progress. It’s worth noting that even with this excellent physio, the first two sessions were the most useful; the remaining two were essentially check-ins to ensure that everything was progressing as expected.

When I was finally released back to training I had lost a lot of condition, my shoulder still felt fragile, and I could only manage three pull ups before fatigue set in. I hadn’t lost sight of muscle ups, but this time I was determined not to rush things. I wanted to achieve them safely and in a way that was sustainable, which brings me to the “how to” part of this article.

Training For Your First Muscle Up

My approach to muscle up training is based on strength. There are a handful of technical points to remember, but beyond that, it’s all about building strength specifically for muscle ups, and balancing that training with complementary exercises to stay injury-free. Once you’ve gained sufficient strength, you will be doing muscle ups.

As you’re aware, there are several variants of muscle up. They can be performed on a bar or on rings, and they can be achieved through brute strength or instead utilize the stretch-reflex and the so-called “kipping” motion. I’m going concentrate on what I consider to be the most shoulder-friendly form: bar muscle ups achieved through strength and strict form (arms in near-perfect sync), with no pre-stretch and no deliberate swinging or kipping.

I’ll outline the elements that I consider essential for a successful first bar muscle up. Read this section carefully. The details matter and can make the difference between success and failure.

Rotated Grip and Grip Width

How you grip the bar is a hugely important factor in a successful muscle up attempt, yet there seems to be a lot of conflicting advice on the web and in tutorial videos. Some say you need to use a “false grip.” Others say the false grip is unnecessary, and yet others seem confused about what a false grip is anyway.

I’ll make this really simple, because it is really simple. In order to transition from the pull up phase of a muscle up into a dip, you must have the major knuckles of your hands facing forwards rather than upwards. Unless you do this, the muscle up will not be possible. You may have seen videos of people starting a muscle up attempt with a regular pull up grip (knuckles pointing upwards). Go back and watch those videos again and you’ll see the athlete’s hands rotate forwards as their shoulders clear the bar.

It is far, far easier to start with your hands in this rotated, knuckles-forward position. The more rotation you can get, the easier the muscle up will be, but how you achieve this position is a matter of personal preference and physiology. If the bar width and the dimensions of your hands permit, you may be able to simply rotate your hands with your thumbs still around the bar; this is my preferred position because I don’t feel “in command” of the bar unless my thumbs are an active part of the grip.

However, you may feel more comfortable if you take your thumb out of the grip entirely. In a still more extreme variation, neither the thumbs nor the fingers are actually gripping round the bar; instead, the hands are “hooked” onto the bar, with the finger tips trapping the bar against the heel of the palm. Theoretically this provides the maximum advantage in the transition phase of the muscle up (the shift from pull up to dip), because the knuckles are not only rotated to the front but are shifted forwards on the bar. Experiment to find the grip style that suits you and stick with it.

The distance between your arms is just as important as the rotated position of your hands. When most people are told to adopt a shoulder-width grip, they actually go wider than their shoulders—their arms end up splaying outward from each other slightly. This makes a muscle up considerably more difficult to achieve and increases stress on the shoulders.

Using a gym mirror or feedback from a training partner, make sure that your arms are either strictly parallel, or perhaps tapering inwards very slightly. This is how you’ll achieve your first muscle up. You can experiment with different grip positions later if you wish.

Pull Up Behind the Bar, Not Under It

During a muscle up you pull yourself up behind the bar, rather than staying directly underneath it. You must do it this way in order to achieve as much height as possible before you transition into the dip above the bar. Another way to think of this is that instead of pulling yourself up to the bar, you’re trying to pull the bar down towards the tops of your thighs.

Use Your Legs As Counterbalance

As you pull up towards the bar, there’ll be a natural tendency for your upper body to lean back away from it. This is the opposite of the position required for the transition phase of the muscle up. Instead, your head and shoulders should be aiming forward and over the bar. To help you achieve this position you need to bring your legs forward, as though adopting a loose “L-sit” posture.

The best way to learn this is to try some dips on a low straight bar, such as the bar of a Smith machine; more on this later.

Keep Your Elbows from Lifting Up and Out

Most people, myself included, have a tendency to raise their elbows away from their sides as they attempt the transition from pull up to dip. While this may be a natural response, it isn’t mechanically helpful, robs you of strength when you most need it, and increases the stress on your joints. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Always try to keep your elbows close to your sides as you enter and battle through the transition phase of the muscle up.

Foundational Training Exercises

What follows is a summary of the main exercises I used to achieve my first muscle up. You’ll notice that they don’t feature a regular serving of triceps dips. Triceps dips on a bench have been out of favor for reasons of shoulder health for some time, but I’m not keen on the regular dip-station variant of the exercise either; the distance between your arms can rarely be adjusted and it’s very easy to stray into shoulder-damaging bad form. I didn’t need dip training to get my first muscle up (other than the counter-balance practice I’ll describe later), and I certainly didn’t need it once I could do muscle ups on a regular basis. Once in a blue moon I do try a handful of weighted regular dips just to gauge my strength. I usually find I can comfortably handle more weight than most other people in the gym. Dips just aren’t necessary if you do the transition-specific exercises I describe below.

I’m also not an advocate of doing negative muscle ups on the bar until you’re strong enough to do the whole thing under your own steam—your form will be lacking, you won’t fully understand the movement, and you’ll strain your shoulders, elbows, and wrists unduly. The exercises I’ve listed below will get you the results you want while minimizing the stress on your joints.

Pull Ups

Obviously pull ups are a going to be an essential part of your training, but at what point can you declare yours to be “good enough” for muscle ups? A common metric used in tutorial videos is the maximum strict form reps you can perform in a single set, and the magic number often quoted is twenty. This usually comes without any justification, and prior to my shoulder injury, I dismissed it as too arbitrary. Now I endorse it, and here’s why.

Some contenders for pull up world records have stated that there is a very close correlation between strength and max reps up until twenty or so; only after that does endurance play a bigger role. My own experience tends to confirm that. I set twenty pull ups as my ceiling as I fought back to fitness after my injury, and on reaching that, I began to include weighted pull ups in my training for the first time in more than a year. I discovered almost immediately that my one rep max for weighted pull ups had actually increased over my previous personal best, achieved when I was only capable of fifteen continuous pull ups. What’s more, the training that got me to twenty reps brought other benefits: my grip strength and grip endurance were better, my pull up movement was more efficient, and when fresh, the height and speed I could achieve in an explosive single pull up were much improved.

This brings me to another important metric for pull ups: height. The more height you can gain from the pull up, the easier the transition to the dip becomes. As a guide, videos I took from my early muscle up attempts indicate that “good enough” is when, at the very top of an explosive pull up, the bar is at mid-chest level. Prior to that, you’re asking too much of your transition strength.

So what training can help you reach these milestones in your pull ups?

As a starting point, I recommend trying the legendary Armstrong Pull Up Program until you get a feeling for the types of exercise that get the best results for you. In my case, I found that the workouts involving escalating hardship and timed rests suited me well, both physically and psychologically; the “pyramid” was and still is my favorite pull up routine (timed rests between sets, adding one rep each set and ten seconds rest for each rep done in the previous set, until failure).

There is one exercise I credit most for getting me past my final sticking point on the way to twenty reps, and it may surprise you: pull ups assisted by a resistance band. Yes, I’m talking about the classic beginner’s configuration, with one end of the band strung over the bar, and your knees or feet inside the loop at the other end. One day a week, and in the privacy of my own home (because using the band in public takes unusual bravery) I would do four sets of twenty reps using the band. As I fatigued I even allowed myself to use the rebound from the band to get extra help on the final reps, but I always refused to quit before I’d reached twenty. I believe this helped in two ways:

• Mechanically I was getting significant help for the first 30-40% of the pull up but at the top, which is the hard part, I was still on my own.
• Psychologically twenty now became an obtainable number. The importance of this should not be underestimated, especially if you subscribe to “central governor” theory.

To further help with height and the top portion of the pull up, I’d recommend two drills: speed sets and iso-hangs.

• For speed sets, do two rapid-fire repetitions of the fastest and highest pull ups you can manage. Rest for a fixed period such as thirty seconds, then repeat. Perform as many sets as you can before speed and height seriously degrade. Try to keep the movement as smooth as possible as this will produce the best speed and height; tension from an overly vigorous approach is a barrier to performance, not an aid.
• For iso-hangs, get a partner with a stopwatch, pull up to maximum height, and hold there for as long as you can. You really do need a partner for this, not only to handle the timer but also to provide encouragement; it’s a truly unpleasant exercise. As fatigue sets in try to pulse higher on the bar to eke out a few more seconds. When your hold time approaches a minute, try it weighted.

There is one other thing I’d like to add: I’m a big fan of “scap pull ups” as a warm up prior to a conventional pull up workout. A set of ten reps causes no fatigue but gets the shoulders moving smoothly, efficiently, and ready for what is to follow. Prior to including this in my warm up routine I always felt that a workout-opening max reps attempt would end prematurely due to inefficient movement; my second set of pull ups would feel much better mechanically, but of course now fatigue would rob me of the new personal best I was seeking.

Front Tuck Levers

I believe there’s a big crossover between front levers and the transition phase of the muscle up; as I got closer to being able to perform a front lever, my transition strength increased. It’s a simple exercise, but it’s easy to perform incorrectly.

While hanging from the bar, bend your knees; the greater the angle at your knees, the easier each rep becomes. Keep your arms straight, and your core engaged to maintain your posture, raise your feet up towards the bar. Do not bend your elbows, and refrain from using your abs and hip flexors to curl your legs up to the bar unless you absolutely have to. Imagine that everything below your shoulders is carved from stone, rigid and unable to move; the entire lifting and rotational movement occurs at the shoulders. Hold for a second when you reach the top, then lower as slowly as you can and repeat. If you do this correctly, two or three sets of five reps will be challenging. You can always increase hardship by reducing the bend at your knees, and by stopping and holding position for a few seconds at various points.

Cable Lat Pulldown Transitions

If you could only do one exercise for building transition strength, this would be it. It allows you to train the basic muscle up movement with variable load and provides a consistent way to track your progress.

The ideal candidate for this exercise is a cabled lat pulldown machine with a leg restraint, and enough travel to allow the bar to reach that restraint. If your gym’s lat pull down machine doesn’t measure up, you can substitute any tall cable station or even resistance bands, with the drawback that you may pull yourself off the floor unless you load yourself down (weight vest, chains draped around shoulders, etc.)

This exercise can be done after pull ups, but make sure that your triceps haven’t been pre-exhausted by any prior training.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Fix a straight bar to the machine; as long as it’s at least as wide as your shoulders, you’re good to go.
2. Adopt an overhand grip on the bar much as you would for a muscle up attempt; you can even use your preferred rotated grip style if you wish.
3. Starting with your arms overhead, bring your elbows smoothly down to your sides against the resistance.
4. Keeping your upper arms fixed by your sides, continue pushing the bar forward and down toward the knee restraint until it makes contact. As you do this, curl your hands so that your major knuckles face forward, or even forward and down slightly.
5. Slowly return to the start position the same way; let the forearms come up first while keeping the elbows fixed by your side, then let the upper arms rotate up too.

I used to perform two variants of this exercise. The first prioritized strict form and control over the speed of the bar, progressing to the heaviest resistance I could handle while still maintaining a slow smooth movement throughout each rep, for five reps, perhaps stopping and holding briefly at random points. The second variant was basically a negative transition. I upped the resistance, getting the bar down to the lowest point any way I could, then tried to slow the return movement as much as possible.

When you first approach this exercise it’s natural that you’ll try to match the resistance to your body mass, on the assumption that when you can perform the exercise at that level, you must have enough strength for a real muscle up transition. In all likelihood you’ll discover that what you can handle falls well short of your body weight, and you’ll feel demoralized. The good news is that if your pull ups are strong and high enough, you will be able to do muscle ups before you reach this landmark. As a guide, I achieved my first muscle up when I could manage 55kgs (versus the 75kgs that I weighed) in the strict version of the exercise.

Simple Tiger-Bend Push Ups

A great way to follow lat-pulldown transitions is to perform a few sets of so-called “tiger-bend” push ups. These come in many different flavors, but the simplest variant will suffice. Start much as you would for a regular push up, but with your hands slightly further forward than usual and strictly body width apart. Lower your forearms down until they make contact with the floor, taking care not to splay your elbows out to the side, then push back up into the start position.

Bar Dips For Counter-Balance Practice Only

As already stated, the muscle up transition requires you to know how to counterbalance your upper body by bringing your legs forward, as though in a loose L-sit. The Olympic bar in a Smith machine or squat rack is fine for practicing this, even if it is free to rotate.

Set the bar around chest height, jump up into the top position of a dip (like the finish of a muscle up), and get your balance. Now slowly lower your chest down towards the bar, bending your elbows. As you do this, you’ll instinctively feel the need to project your legs forward to maintain balance. The lower you go, the more you’ll need to involve your legs, bringing your feet upwards and further forward. Push back up and notice how your leg position returns to near vertical.

Once you’ve got the hang of this, you’re done. There’s nothing to be gained by doing more straight bar dips; the earlier transition exercises will give you what you need.

Exercises to Balance All Those Pull Ups

In a typical training week I average more than two hundred pull ups, and you’ll probably be doing much the same. By most regular gym-goer standards that’s a high number, and if you don’t actively seek to balance it, there must eventually be consequences. Your lats, already large and powerful muscles, may become dominant, leading to posture and shoulder problems. Push ups are a partial counter to all that pulling, especially if you focus on protracting the shoulder blades at the top (as in a “push up plus”). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Armstrong pull up site promotes push ups as a companion to its program.

Push ups are only part of the equation, however; you also need to work on your core and ensure that you keep upward shoulder rotation healthy and unimpeded. There are abundant choices for building and maintaining core strength, but when it comes to upward shoulder rotation, careful selection may be needed.

Rather than including traditional shoulder presses in my workouts, I prefer alternatives that are more forgiving if any shoulder dysfunction is present, known or otherwise:

• Scaption with a shrug: starting with arms by your sides, raise dumbbells upward in a wide V (not directly to the side) with your thumbs uppermost, until your arms are parallel to the floor. Now execute a shrug and make a controlled return to the start position.
• Landmine shoulder press: although a simple exercise this has a multitude of variants, each with its own benefits. As long as you maintain good form, they all provide a more shoulder-friendly upward pressing motion.
• Face pulls with neutral grip: A well-executed neutral grip face pull activates the upward rotators, rear delts, rhomboids, and external rotators. Don’t let your elbows drop and keep the resistance low enough to execute the whole movement, especially the return, in a slow and controlled way.

If you’re wondering how many reps and sets are needed to counter all those pull ups, I’m afraid I’m not going to give you a direct answer. My feeling is that you don’t have to provide an equal and opposite level of exercise to avoid problems. I believe it’s enough to maintain good functional strength in the opposing movements, and perhaps more importantly, retain a strong mind-muscle connection. I have no data or research to back that up, but that’s what guides my own training and it hasn’t let me down yet.

Rotator Cuff Exercises

It’s wise to include exercises that specifically target the rotator cuff muscles, regardless of the main activities in your workout. My favorites are:

• External rotation: there are many variations for this; learn good form for a few and cycle through them each week. Keep the resistance light, and only do concentrated sets at the very end of the workout; continuing to exercise hard with fatigued cuff muscles is a recipe for injury.
• Side-lying abductions for the supraspinatus: this is almost certainly overkill, but regardless, I like to follow my general cuff exercises with one that specifically targets the supraspinatus muscle. Lie on your side, uppermost arm straight, holding a light dumbbell. Rest the dumbbell on your leg and let the upper arm relax completely for a second, then slowly roll it off to your rear and begin a small upward and downward pulsing motion, with your arm externally rotated so that your thumb is uppermost. Keep the movement small; in particular, don’t raise your arm more than fifteen degrees from your side, otherwise your delts may join the party. Repeat until fatigue is felt.

Reverse Wrist Curls

Once you begin using your preferred muscle up grip and making muscle up attempts, your wrists will be subjected to more stress than they’ve previously encountered; I find reverse curls to be a great way to offset this and avoid strains. With your forearms supported, hold a barbell or dumbbells with a pronated grip and curl your hands upwards; a couple of high rep sets to failure at the end of your workout should suffice.

Thoracic Spine Mobilization

Just about everyone should do regular thoracic spine mobilization, but given that muscle up training requires curling forward and around the bar, I think it’s particularly wise to keep the reverse movement healthy. There are plenty of exercises to choose from. I favor the “barrel” on a foam roller or slam ball, and lying rotations. Just be sure to cover both extension and rotation.

Trigger Point Release

Though once a huge skeptic, I am now a firm believer in the benefits of trigger point release. I believe it does help resolve muscle knots and tightness, but equally importantly it can detect incipient problems before they hinder normal training. I always carry a hard rubber lacrosse ball to give my pec minor, lats and triceps muscles “the once-over.”

Putting Everything Together

Mountain climbers have to be wary of summit fever; the desire to reach to the top can be so strong that it compromises decision making and leads to avoidable accidents. Similarly, the desire to achieve your first muscle up can lead you to push your body too hard. Always remember that the fastest route to success is to maximize progress while avoiding injury.

It will be tempting to make very frequent attempts at muscle ups, but I’d advise against that— it’ll become a distraction from the training you need to succeed and it’ll put you at greater risk of injury. Instead, try the following test-train-test cycle:

Re-read the bar muscle up essentials section of this article to load the crucial points in your head. Warm up thoroughly then video at least two attempted muscle ups, one from the front or rear, and one from the side. If any part of the muscle up movement feels unbalanced, or if your arms fall out of sync as you enter the transition phase, abort immediately, rest, and try again. Never try to fight your way through an attempt that has gone wrong; you’ll just fatigue your muscles prematurely and may injure yourself.

Study your videos carefully. Look for simple technical flaws: was your grip too wide, or not sufficiently rotated at the start? Did your grip slip out of rotation during the pull up? Did you remember to pull up behind the bar and use your legs to keep your upper body upright as you ascend? Did you allow your elbows to wing out? Now, look at the height you achieved in the pull up phase; if your armpits didn’t at least clear the top of the bar, you need to concentrate on getting higher pull ups. The higher you can go with the pull up, the less work you’ll need to do in the transition.

Now, commit to a period of training during which you will not make any further muscle up attempts. I recommend a month, but if you gain strength rapidly a shorter period such as two weeks may be more appropriate.

When this period is up, make your new attempts, scrutinize the videos, and either celebrate madly or get started on your next training cycle. How you structure each training cycle is, of course, a matter of personal preference; much will depend on your current condition, training history, and other commitments, but here’s how I did it.

I prioritized my pull up training above everything else, always doing pull ups before any other exercises, and training four to five times each week until I’d achieved the landmark twenty rep set. After that, I switched to doing pull ups three times per week, but they remained the first thing I did in any gym session. I introduced front tuck levers, lat pulldown transitions, and tiger bend push ups to my routine twice per week to build my transition strength, allowing at least two days recovery between each such workout. Throughout all this, I would run through the injury prevention exercises three times per week, every week, at the end of my main workout.

Training like this, I found that every six weeks my progress would begin to stall, requiring a “deload” week to recharge. During deload weeks I refrained from pull ups and transition training, doubled-up on the injury prevention exercises, and diverted more effort in to my legs. I hated these “off” weeks but on my return to normal training, progress always took a leap forward.

To finish, I’ll deal with the question that everybody asks: “how long until I get my first muscle up?” The only way I can answer is to say this: in the absence of technical flaws such as a bad grip, it will happen when you achieve sufficient strength. Have faith in the training, and one day when you’re making a scheduled attempt you’ll find yourself up above the bar.

Credits:

1. Paul Roberts is a life-long fitness enthusiast and fitness photographer. You can view his work or get in touch via his website.

2. I’d like to thankPerformance Gym in Kilwinning, Ayrshire who allowed me to use their excellent gym for the videos and photos in this article.

The post How to Perform Muscle Ups Without Wrecking Your Shoulders appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I’ll relate my own experiences to reveal what I think are the main problems, and then we’ll hear from Eric Pawlikowski, a personal trainer with whom I’ve had good results, to get the insider’s view.

The Problem with Short-Term Thinking

When I first got into training I spared little thought towards maintaining fitness for a lifetime. Everything I did was about short-term goals, and I wasn’t interested in what might happen to me when I was 40, let alone even older than that. I think it’s common for young adults to feel that way.

My training changed as I aged, but always in an adhoc way. New exercise trends would appear from time to time, and I’d try some of them, perhaps adding them to my repertoire if I thought they’d help with my current goal or if I just happened to like them. It didn’t really matter what I did or didn’t do; my body just seemed to handle it and keep on trucking.

Other people in their twenties were the same, and I can see that nothing has really changed. They’ll dabble in the latest exercise crazes that come around, be that martial arts, team sports, running, Crossfit, and so on. If they pick up a sport-related injury and see a physical therapist, something of what they’re told will be added into the mix. Maybe they’ll have a run of sessions with a personal trainer, or read some fitness articles, and that will be added to the other influences on their training, but throughout it all there’ll be no coherent long training term plan. This seems to be consequence-free at first, but the older we get, the more all this adhoc training starts to catch up with us.

Each time we throw ourselves into an activity hard enough and for long enough, we adapt to it, and that adaptation leads to muscle imbalances. Sometimes these can balance themselves out; like a drunk driving a car, you might not hold a straight line but if each swerve to one side is countered by a swerve to the other, you should at least stay on the road.

More often, however, the effects are cumulative and eventually a breaking point is reached; injuries begin to stack up and everything gets harder than it used to be. For many people this coincides with crossing an age boundary; they blame their age for their condition, and society backs them up. The majority step away from an active life at this point, and the few that persist often continue in a haphazard way, perhaps switching to other activities that they can still manage to do.

In my case, the result of all my pseudo-random training was a seized hip and an osteoarthritis diagnosis, and it was this shock that finally taught me that training without a well-considered long term plan is not sustainable. If this realization is shared by the health and fitness industry, there’s no sign of it.

A Renovation Project That Lasts a Lifetime

If you liken a body thrown out of balance by indiscriminate training and lifestyle choices to a house marred by ill-planned extensions, changes, and bodged repairs, you’re now facing what could be called a major renovation project. This is a popular subject for TV programs, and one thing they all agree on is that you can’t undertake such a project without employing at least some professional help. Your house has gone from being a well understood and regulation-compliant new build to being an ailing, one-of-a-kind variant that needs expert attention. What’s more, that attention had better be closely managed or you’ll burn through your budget and your house will still need fixing.

Similarly, few people are capable of fixing 30 years or more of abuse and imbalances without professional help. As with tradesmen, this help will come from people with particular specialities and skills, and must be carefully project-managed in order to get a consistent and desirable result.

This is exactly what I tried to do when I consulted professionals to help me address my own imbalances. What I experienced has been echoed by people from around the world who contacted me after buying my self-help book on beating osteoarthritis. My input was largely disregarded; the pros insisted on going back to square one, slowly discovering the things I already knew and had tried to tell them. When they eventually caught up with me, they proved incapable of taking things forward because my situation was too far removed from the simple, common cases they were equipped to handle.

In short, the pros don’t like being project managed, and they target their solutions for the most common cases. Their first instinct is to take control and work through things in their own well-practiced way; if your case is anything out of the ordinary, this is unlikely to get you the solution you want. Now all of this is entirely understandable, even forgivable, because with limited resources to spare it makes sense to concentrate on solutions that have the broadest application. Still, this comes as little comfort to those who have their hopes raised by confident promises, pay their money, and come away sorely disappointed.

There Are Lights Along the Path

This left my faith in experts somewhat dented, but some time later I had a more positive experience. I was going through a slump, low on motivation and lacking direction after backing off my training to address yet more imbalances. My gym at the time was run by personal trainers, and over a period of a couple of years I’d gotten to know some of them quite well. One of them, a bodybuilder and calisthenics enthusiast called Eric, seemed like he might be the right trainer at the right time.

His sessions were genuinely helpful, and got me back on track with my training which helped me to resolve numerous longstanding issues. It’s difficult to identify why this course of training was so successful. Much of what I learned could have been self-researched, but without the combination of encouragement, inspiration, technical correction, and exchange of ideas I received, I wouldn’t have made the same progress.

This one successful consultation went some way to restoring my confidence in experts, and proved that good results are possible if you can find the right person, with the right skills, at the right time. After so many failures however, I still see a lot of problems with the fitness (and health) industry as it currently stands and I’m far from convinced that this good experience with Eric is easily repeatable. I know for sure I wouldn’t risk hiring another trainer unless I had the opportunity to get to know the candidates well beforehand and observe them at work. The best recommendation I can give is to find a gym where a number of trainers work openly and just bide your time, using what you see to help make your choice.

The final, and perhaps most important piece of advice I can give from my own experience is to stay in control; never relinquish your position as project manager. A big drawback of seeking professional help is that it feeds the hope that someone can do all the hard work for you—they can’t. The sooner you accept that and take responsibility for your own health and fitness, the sooner you’ll get lasting results. Health and fitness professionals are available to help you, but it’s up to you to manage them wisely.

Fitness Insider’s View – Personal Trainer Eric Pawlikowski

The analogy with the house renovation is great. When Susan came to me, her renovation project was partially complete, as she’d already done a lot of research and work to put right some major structural problems. Even after all that work she was going through a low point, and had lost momentum. Things were starting to slide back into decay.

I saw my first task was being to provide emotional support and a challenging training plan that would reignite her spark of enthusiasm. You could equate this to scaffolding and steel joists in a house. We put our heads together on a few things and came up with new ways of waking up the lazy muscles. I didn’t try to replace and redo all that she’d done, I worked with it, just as anyone should do with a partially renovated period property.

I taught her all the techniques that I used so that she’d be able to carry on progressing herself when our sessions ended. This happened earlier than expected; she had committed to one year of training but at the six-month stage she was expanding and evolving so rapidly that there was no way I was going to keep up with her plans with only one session a week together. She reached the point where she didn’t need my help anymore and that is what you want as a trainer, even though it’s not the best way to make money.

I think the approach I took with Susan is exactly the kind of service an experienced client needs from a personal trainer. I think everyone could benefit from something like this periodically throughout their lives. On your own things can get stale, no matter how skilled or experienced you are. You need an objective second opinion to fix bad habits that have crept in, spot things that are missing, and to inject new ideas and skills that can get you moving forward again.

I agree that the personal trainer model doesn’t consider what happens in 10, 20, or 30 years, because usually you won’t have the same client for that long. Susan’s case gave me a lot of head-scratching and researching, but I enjoyed it, and I believe that’s how we, as professionals, learn and improve.

Problems Within the Fitness Industry

Susan has identified some problems with the fitness industry, but I’d like to outline some additional issues that I see, and I’ll conclude with thoughts on the model that I think helps address these problems.

In the UK there is no official regulation and anyone can become a personal trainer. Qualifications aren’t legally required, and even when they are present, they don’t always mean anything other than the person turned up and paid the necessary fee. Qualifications that are given without being earned can give the public false confidence in a trainer, and they can give the trainer false confidence, too, which is dangerous.

Then there’s the push for client retention. From a financial and workload point of view it’s much better to keep a small group of the same clients for two or three sessions a week for a period of several years than to have a rapid turnover of new clients; you spend less time searching for new clients and getting to know them. That’s why some trainers will try to hold on to a client whether it’s the best for them or not; Google for “client retention” and you’ll see some of the tricks they use.

On the other hand, inexperienced clients really will do best if they stay with a trainer for a long while, as this will hard-wire good form and good training habits for life. If they quit after a shorter period, say just a few months, they’ll slide back to where they started and all that effort and education will have been wasted. Unfortunately, there’s no way for a client to know whether their trainer is trying to keep them for financial reasons, or because it will produce the best long-term result.

There should be a bond of trust between a client and a trainer, but some trainers have a very low ethical standard. If a client opens up about personal problems they may have, for example their insecurities, some trainers use this personal knowledge to maneuver the client into buying more sessions. If a new exercise or diet becomes fashionable, the new trainer may instantly claim expertise whether they have it or not. These people are no better than used car salesmen, and they lower the standing of reputable PTs.

It’s not just bad trainers scamming clients that you need to worry about; other members of the fitness industry lure otherwise well-intentioned, inexperienced trainers into personal training with promises of big money. They sell them courses filled with dubious facts, give them meaningless qualifications. and send them out to spread this misinformation to all their unsuspecting clients. This is how so much trash becomes accepted knowledge.

The end result of all this is that it’s difficult for a PT to make a living ethically. The typical client has absolutely no way of telling the difference between a good trainer and a bad one, sometimes even after having trained with them. The bad ones reflect poorly on everyone in the industry, and once someone has had (or heard of) a bad experience, it’s hard to convince them that things will be different with a good trainer.

This can only be changed through regulation, the establishment of mandatory qualifications that actually mean something, ongoing training to keep everyone to standard, and gyms that provide potential clients the ability to see trainers in action and get to know them before hiring them. It’s not just the cost of a bad fitness pro you need to worry about; it’s a position of extreme trust with the potential to do serious and lasting harm both emotionally and physically.

The Budget Gym Model – A Step in the Right Direction?

In the absence of any national regulation, some gyms are stepping up to raise standards themselves. The gym we used to shoot the photographs for this article, The Gym Group in Glasgow, UK, has its own requirements for all its PTs:

• Minimum qualification of a Level Three Personal Trainer with The Gym Group
• Strict standards and codes of conduct
• Regular top up training (for example, the management might bring in an osteopath to give PTs more in depth understanding of how to help clients with back and joint pain.)
• Discouragement of the ‘hard sell’
• PTs must devote 10 hours per week to running the gym

This model addresses a lot of the current problems while the resident the PTs get to see gym members training, members get to see PTs at work, and the absence of hard sell promotes a friendly, helpful atmosphere that is all about training well and making progress. Even when a client finishes their course of sessions with a trainer, they can still see each other regularly and maintain contact, keeping the door open for working together again further down the line.

Credits

Eric Pawlikowski is an experienced personal trainer and body conditioning consultant, a former martial artist and competitive natural bodybuilder. Eric is passionate about helping people to build strong, functional bodies that look amazing. Eric can be contacted via his website.

The photos in this article were taken at The Gym, Bothwell St. Glasgow. The Gym Group has branches throughout the UK and are open 24 hours a day with state of the art equipment, no contracts, no joining fees, and low monthly fees.

The post Project Manage Your Health and Fitness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Exercise Is the Key

Thanks to improvements in healthcare, average lifespans are increasing and in turn, we should be seeing people holding onto youthful vigor for longer. That’s not what’s happening; if anything, the average person is hitting the skids physically at an earlier age than previous generations, and we’re even seeing diseases that used to be confined mainly to adults (like type 2 diabetes) becoming more common in children.

Research based on “baby boomers” who embraced exercise as a core part of their lifestyle, and kept going with it, is now suggesting that significant decline needn’t happen until we hit our seventies. It’s no secret: exercise is the best prescription for an enduring active life. Today’s health organizations know this, and even Hippocrates knew it well over 2000 years ago. Despite this, society and invention as a whole seem hell-bent on eliminating exercise from our lives, and though this isn’t necessarily killing us, it is making us sick.

A Driverless Vehicle with Faulty Sat-Nav

I don’t how or when it started, but our first world societies are continually broadcasting the wrong messages, sending us hurtling down the wrong tracks.

Our economies are heavily dependent on us working long hours to do things in our free time that are bad for us. We’re made to feel out of step if we don’t have more social gatherings where excess consumption of food and drink is normal, we’re sold an endless stream of labor-saving, exercise reducing gadgets, and when the effects of our inactivity start to bite we buy medicines that mask the symptoms, allowing us to carry on without tackling the real cause.

Most of our televised sports implicitly reinforce the idea that after thirty, we’re all has-beens; how often do you see an interview with an “older” athlete without hearing the question “so, when are you going to retire?”

Governments are telling us to eat less and exercise more, but their messages are largely uninspiring and certainly ineffective against the constant barrage of advertising and social pressures. Youngsters get sold all the exciting, fashionable pursuits, but what’s the message for us older types? Try to walk a bit more each day and in a few years, you might still be able to play with the grandkids without having a coronary or a stroke—please, that’s hardly the stuff to tempt people out of their comfy seats. The powers-that-be could do better, and if you’re feeling cynical you might even suspect that part of the reason they don’t is a conflict of interest; stop that over-consumption tomorrow and all our economies would instantly tank.

Set Your Own Course

To see what lies ahead if you follow society’s lead, just take a look at the average people around you who are ten, twenty, or thirty years your seniors. If you want to fare better when you reach their age, you need to do something different from them, but that’s much harder than you might think.

The first thing to realize is that many of the factors that influence our decision-making don’t operate at a purely conscious level; they slip under the radar, tapping into core traits that have been part of our makeup since humans first walked the earth. Once such influence is group or “tribal” behavior.

We are so strongly hard-wired to conform with the behavioral norms of the groups to which we feel we belong, that we’ll change our posture, mannerisms, facial expressions, the way of speaking, and even our perception and belief systems. Much of this will happen without us even realizing it. If this sounds far-fetched, Google “Asch’s Conformity” as your introduction to the power of the group.

When the social groups with which you interact are closely aligned with your fitness goals, both short term and ideally long term, they’ll aid you in achieving those goals; conversely, if your goals are in conflict with your groups, you’ll find it much harder to stick to your training and dietary plans. This shouldn’t come as any great surprise, but a less obvious implication of group conformity is that changing your group can actually change what you like and dislike. For example, if your head tells you that exercise should be a bigger part of your life but you don’t enjoy the process of exercising, then joining a group of fitness junkies is a fast way to change that.

Realizing this gives you control over a powerful tool for changing your life; you can break your ties with a group that doesn’t serve your goals, and switch to one that is a better match. I say “better” because you’ll rarely find a precise match, especially in the longer term. You’ll eventually face the hard choice again: compromise your plans, or move on. Leaving a group is never easy, but it may be necessary if you’re serious about your future.

The Marketing Monster

I’m no psychologist but even I’m aware that many of Sigmund Freud’s theories have fallen from favor. For all that, I still think his “id, ego, super-ego” model can be useful for understanding the influences around us.

The id represents the primitive, instinctual drives we all have; when it whispers in our ears, it tells us about the things it wants. Marketers forge links between these drives (typically sex, food, power, and so on) and their products. Then the id starts whispering that it wants that new car, or phone, or drink, or belly-banging meal. What’s more, marketers are very keen to spread the message that it’s okay to give in to these desires—it’s normal; it’s what everyone does. Look at these lean, fit people enjoying a life of endless partying. It’s not doing them any harm, is it?

The super-ego is the rule-driven moral conscience, whispering counter-arguments in your other ear, and stuck in the middle there’s you, the ego—the conscious mind with the power to decide what you do next. If your ego is strong, you’ll weigh the two conflicting sides and make a balanced choice that can appease both. If it’s weak, it’ll side with the id immediately then spend the next minute cooking up some pseudo-logic that justifies its decision. Have you ever opened a big pack of peanuts, and instead of taking a handful and saving the rest for another day, you’ve eaten your way through the whole thing thinking “well, if I eat them all now they’re gone, and then I can get back on the diet tomorrow?”

Marketers want you to side with your id all the time, and they’ll even provide you with some ready-made justifications so that your ego doesn’t have to work up a sweat creating its own. It doesn’t matter if some of your desires are in conflict; if the id says “I want that pizza” and “I want a six-pack,” marketers will try to sell you the pizza and one of those EMS abdominal exercisers to go with it.

There are two things to take from this concept. The first is that gaining awareness of marketing and its tricks is the first step in resisting the temptations. The second is that if marketers can create a desire within you for something that previously held no appeal, you can do that for yourself in order to serve your own goals.

Reframe Healthy to Be Enjoyable

A core technique employed by marketers is borrowed from the world of psychology: classical conditioning. Essentially this involves associating something you like with something that you don’t. It doesn’t happen instantly; it’s a cumulative effect that builds through repetition. The more you receive the message that a given thing will bring you something you really want, the more you believe it, and the two become intertwined. This is how cars and bottles of smelly liquid become associated with sex and success, this is why you want Apple’s latest iPhone, and this is how you can inject a beneficial exercise into your life and come to enjoy it.

As an example, consider how I became a fitness junkie. As a youngster I was exercise-adverse; at school, I dodged it whenever I could and was hopeless at sports. I was however interested in eastern mysticism and philosophy, and against all the odds, one evening I ended up in a beginner’s karate class. I had no interest in the physical training itself, but the overwhelmingly positive vibe that the class delivered brought me back again and again. I was surrounded by people telling me how much they enjoyed the training, and the more effort I put into each session, the more I was rewarded with feel-good endorphins to counter my sore muscles.

Eventually I didn’t even need the class environment to enjoy karate training. How can you make this work for you? Well, to build on my example, let’s say you find a personal trainer, gym, or club that delivers the training you need but sweetens the pill by making you feel good about yourself during the session. Over time, the positive associations with training will build, and in due course you won’t need the crutch that kept you going in the first place. The more you can reframe the thing you tolerate in the light of something you enjoy, the more palatable it becomes. Eventually you’ll be able to convince your id into giving you more helpful messages: “go on, just one more set, and go heavier next time.”

Rules Need to Be Broken Sometimes

For some people it’s the other side, the super-ego, that is dominant; their lives are ruled by a strong sense of duty. While this can have its benefits, particularly when it comes to steadfast compliance with a training or injury rehabilitation program, it can bring drawbacks.

People with a high level of responsibility are even more susceptible to social pressure; instead of considering their own plans for their lives, their minds are constantly invaded by thoughts of what they feel they should be doing. From a training perspective, these people are also more likely to hit long-lasting plateaus.

I have to say this is not a problem I share, but with the growth of social media I’m seeing this more and more in younger generations; they’re so dominated by the need to win the approval of their peers (Facebook likes, anyone?) that they can’t live their own lives. Just as the endless desires of the id need to be held in check, so does the anxious interruptions of an overly dominant super-ego. Not all rules have to be followed.

Decide What You Want

With all these influences around you, playing on your base desires and sense of duty, it’s crucial that you decide what goals are truly yours; only then can you confidently commit to your own path.

Start by listing the goals you currently have, and then think carefully about the motives behind each one. Do you have a genuine desire to achieve it, or have you been conditioned to want it by peer pressure and advertising? Is the goal on your list because you know it’s beneficial or practical, even though it may have little emotional appeal?

I find it useful to make a table with goals as the rows, and three columns: one for rating each goal’s desirability for yourself, one for rating desirability based on social influence (it’s fashionable or would earn you the approval of others), and one for rating its objective benefit. Goals that score highly in personal desire and objective benefit columns should float to the top of the table and be highly prioritized; if you want something and it’s beneficial to you, then you should have a stronger chance of achieving it and, more importantly, sustaining it. If something is on your list is there mostly because of the recognition it may bring you, think hard before giving it a high priority. Trying to achieve such goals may make you miserable, and even if you do succeed, it’s likely you won’t sustain it for long. Where goals are in conflict, the priority you’ve given them will break the deadlock.

Reduce the Bad Influences

When I first started writing this article, I thought I’d end up promoting high-intensity exercise and revealing how I structure my training. I do believe that high intensity is particularly important as we age, as there’s plenty of data to show that it’s our ability to perform explosively that wanes earliest and quickest. Many people struggle to sustain high-intensity training, yet I seem to thrive on it even at high frequency and volume. Why? Am I doing something differently from them?

Yes I am, but it’s not because of reps, sets, and weight. I believe I’m better able to cope with intensity and volume because I’ve greatly reduced the stress in my life. Our bodies can’t tell the difference between psychological stress and physical stress; it’s all the same. If you’re burning through your monthly stress capacity outside of the gym, you’ll have less to throw at your workouts.

The key to my stress management was to reduce the negative influences in my life by radically changing my lifestyle. Fifteen years ago I lived in the city in a house with a tiny garden and neighbors far too close for comfort. I spent 2-3 hours a day sitting in rush hour traffic and working in a well-paid job that I hated, and spent the money I earned trying to make it more tolerable. I trained extremely hard in karate for a couple of hours most evenings but spent the rest of my time stuck behind a desk or behind the wheel of a car.

Fast forward to today, and my life is far less stressful, and my work, training, and downtime are gradually moving closer and closer together. I’ve switched from the high earning job to running my own business from home; I don’t earn anything like what I did before, but being your own boss brings its own rewards. My box-like house in the city has been swapped for a home in a country village, and I count horses and cows among my neighbors. I’m a very regular gym goer, interested in calisthenics, bodybuilding, and strength training, but when the weather is good I can get my exercise outdoors. Never underestimate the training value of hammering up a mountain in the dark with a heavy pack on your back while racing to view the sunrise from the summit.

You Can Control Your Fitness Future

Instead of looking towards my 60s, 70s, and ages beyond and seeing only managed decline, I’m excited to see what shape I can be in if I take proper care of my body and keep working to identify and correct all my remaining weaknesses and imbalances.

I’m not saying my life is perfect, and it may be a long way from the kind of life you want, but it’s working far better for me than what I had before. I believe the secret is for each of us to find our own way of living rather than copy someone else’s. Your exercise choices need to be made in the context of your chosen lifestyle; it’s highly likely that you can tackle age, menopause and joint problems as well as me or even better using a very different approach. The key is to find the unique combination that works for you; you can’t buy this as a package and no one can do it for you, whatever claims they might make. Filter out the marketing messages, choose your tribes wisely, listen to your body, and follow your heart.

Ironically, I have some pretty dire events to thank for where I am now (the death of my parents and my osteoarthritis diagnosis, to name but two). These events interrupted the normal flow of my life, giving me the opportunity to see where I was being pushed and make changes. However, you can start doing this now, without needing a traumatic event to shake you out of your rut.

In my next article, I’ll share my thoughts on getting help from health and fitness professionals and also get some insight from a fitness insider, personal trainer Eric Pawlikowski.

The post Society Is Aging Us Prematurely appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As we age we expect to develop aches, pains, and reduced workout tolerance that prevents us from training the way we used to. Those of us who are female also have the added threat of menopause looming over us, with the assumption that fitness, youth, and appearance are all approaching a cliff edge.

Such decline is not inevitable however; if you change your thinking you could be turning in some of your best performances even in your fifties. I’m not saying it’s easy or that there are any guarantees, but if you’re motivated to work hard, hard enough to set you apart from the masses, then read on and learn a little about what worked for me.

Conventional Wisdom Is Limiting

Nowadays we have greater freedom of choice and better access to information than at any other time in history. We should be smashing through sports, health, and fitness barriers like never before. Yet in the area of physical training, we’re constantly bombarded by images, opinions, and beliefs that limit our potential.

Conventional wisdom informs us that:

• If you’re over 50 you’re in the grip of age-related decline and should downsize your training goals accordingly.
• As you age it’s normal to develop stubborn aches and pains in joints, or perhaps even severe pain and an osteoarthritis diagnosis. Accept that this is a normal and unavoidable part of aging and adapt your lifestyle accordingly.
• You need more recovery time when you’re older to avoid overtraining. It’ll be harder to build muscle, and harder to keep fat levels down.

And, if you’re also female:

• At any age, your strength, particularly upper body strength, is inferior to that of your male peers.
• You’ll build muscle at half the rate of men due to lack of testosterone.
• Looking sexy and skinny should be of paramount importance to you, unless you’re over 50 in which case you’re a lost cause; your primary goal in life should be to remain fit enough to play with the grandchildren.
• Be prepared for a catastrophic drop in performance and appearance when you hit menopause—you won’t be able to do anything about it so suck it up and lower your sights.

These beliefs are so pervasive and so deeply entrenched in everyone around us, including the experts in whom we often place blind trust, that it barely crosses our minds to challenge them. Yet, if we do challenge them, consistently and earnestly, many supposed limitations get swept away. My own story is a testament to that.

I Beat the Odds and Proved the Experts Wrong

Back in 2006 I was 42, leading a very active life and training for my 4th degree black belt in Shotokan karate. My training was interrupted by what seemed to be a mild performance-limiting injury, but one which refused to clear up. I went to a specialist who diagnosed it as a classic case of osteoarthritis of the hip. According to him, and almost everyone else I consulted, my training life was now over. Despite the overwhelming weight of expert opinion, I couldn’t accept that was the case; the problem felt like it was rooted in muscles and in soft tissue, not in my joints.

This sudden adversity gave me the jolt I needed to address all the little things I’d noticed during my 20 years of training: imbalances in strength, range of motion, and other anomalies in certain movements. Previously I’d dismissed them as being unworthy of my attention; they’d seemed so minor, and the time and effort required to correct them would have meant less immersion in the stuff I enjoyed. Now faced with the loss of my active life, I wasn’t about to overlook anything that might help.

I spent the next ten years trying to find a solution to my condition. At times I was in a bad place; I went through periods of crippling pain in most of the joints in my body and even succumbed to obesity. Eventually, the breakthrough came when I realized that my problem stemmed from a whole-body muscle imbalance rooted in my core muscles. This was not a joint disease rampaging through my body, this was a treatable condition, and I’d gained sufficient knowledge to administer that treatment myself.

What I learned in my fight against osteoarthritis caused me to question much of the accepted wisdom about training and performance, especially where age-related decline and gender related predictions are concerned.

Fast Forward to 54 Years Old

Now I’m training longer, harder, and recovering faster than at any time in my life. I’m training at a level that most people half my age can’t sustain, especially men, who tend to recover more slowly and burn out more quickly. For a while now I’ve been building volume, intensity, and frequency of training. Currently I train twice a day for six days of the week then a single slow cardio session of 90 minutes on the seventh day. These are all hard sessions, typically lasting for between one and three hours. I’m constantly getting new personal bests, losing fat, and increasing lean mass.

I’m now stronger than I’ve ever been and all my joints are coping fine with heavy loads.

My upper body strength is particularly good. My neutral grip pull up one rep max is nearly 150% of my body weight. My lower body strength is lagging; I had bigger problems to overcome with my lower body, but it’s still good compared to norms for my age and gender. My core isn’t balanced enough for heavy squats and deadlifts, yet. There’s still a risk of my spine twisting and bending while under load. However, I’ve managed machine hack squats weighted with 440% of my body weight and rack pulls at 240%, proving that my supposedly decrepit hip, spine, foot, and shoulder joints are coping perfectly well with heavy loads.

I’m now three years post menopause and the only difference is that my moods are more stable than previously. That in itself has had a positive impact on every aspect of my life, including training. I’m now more consistent, there is no sign of that dreaded middle aged spread, no downturn in performance, and I haven’t shriveled up like a wrinkled prune. I’m still building muscle and cutting fat on an average of 2800 calories a day.

I still have some imbalances holding me back, however. Specifically, one side of my core is still dominant; when I get tired or push beyond my limit the dominant side starts to take over, twisting and bending my spine and causing abnormal movement. My solution? I’ll keep working at it and eventually the two sides of my body will rebalance. I see this as a positive thing; I’m doing great now at age 54, yet there’s still more to be unleashed when I eliminate the last remnants of the imbalance.

My intention is to keep testing my limits, improving mechanics and function, and get new PB’s for many, many years to come. My passion is calisthenics and I’m working hard on skills such as human flag, levers, muscle ups, and single arm pull ups. Bodybuilding provides a foundation for my training, but it’s my own spin on bodybuilding, with the main focus being to restore then maintain perfect balance and function.

You Can Do It, Too

When I shared my osteoarthritis story online I was inundated with requests for help, and I was able to help others achieve similar results. People were actually telling me that after following my approach they’d cancelled hip replacement surgery, stopped taking pain relief medication, and were now leading full and active lives. Even more interestingly, people were finding the approach helped not only with hip osteoarthritis, but also things like hip impingement, SI Joint problems, and general aches, pains, and sore joints.

My personal case clearly wasn’t a fluke; it was a strong indication that many symptoms of so called age-related decline, potentially including menopause symptoms, are actually the result of fatalistic thinking. Change your attitude from ‘accept the inevitable’ to ‘find a solution’ and good things will start to happen.

The Problem with Experts

Here’s the rub, however. In my experience there is no ‘expert’ you can employ to do the problem-solving for you, and here’s why.

Our world is heavily focused on economy of scale; the best bang-for-buck lies in solutions that have the broadest application and highest rate of success. In the case of doctors and physios, who are often battling limited resources and poor patient compliance, this means setting aside research into treatments that aren’t viable for the majority of patients. The same thinking pervades nearly every aspect of modern life; sport, fitness, and physical training are no exception.

Though various professionals may have answers to small parts of the puzzle, they’re so constrained by their business model that they can’t deal with the full, unique combination of problems that a non-standard case presents. No matter how well intentioned, ultimately they’ll divert you onto the same well-worn path that serves the majority cases.

If you’re squarely in the mainstream and you’re happy to stay there, then the prevailing advice is likely to be a good fit for you. For the minority, those willing to move heaven and earth to fulfill their true potential, the best possible results will come not from blind acceptance, but from questioning, researching, and experimenting for yourself. In short, learn to become the leading expert in your own training and you’ll find that many of the limitations you think you have just aren’t real.

Be Your Own Expert

It’s not easy, but no matter how lost and uninformed you are when you start, if you have tenacity and faith in your ability to learn, you can succeed. The information you need is readily available online and easy enough to understand if you’re prepared to spare the effort; you may have to wade through sale pitches to get to it, but it’s there.

I’m not suggesting that you can’t recruit expert help, but you need to stay in the driving seat and be clear about the aspects of your training for which they should be responsible. Remain objective and periodically reassess how much they’re helping you; when you’ve got all you can from a given professional, don’t be afraid to move on.

My Continuation of Perspective

In future articles I’ll go into more detail about how I beat the limitations placed on me, and take a look at research challenging the commonly held beliefs that may be putting an artificial limit on your goals. I’d also love to share my thoughts and experiences on working with professionals and hopefully give them some ideas on how to better serve the biggest, wealthiest, and most dedicated demographic, the baby-boomer generation. My generation.

You might also like:

• It’s Not The Years, It’s The Miles: Training After 50
• Training And Nutrition Considerations For Menopause
• Why Age Is Only A Number

The post Be Your Own Expert and Turbo-Charge Your Training After Age 50 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.