Researchers from Swinburne’s Centre for Human Psychopharmacology write in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease about the mechanisms underlying cognitive performance in older people living independently and it proves to be an interesting look at the long-term benefits of preventative exercise.

Lead author, PhD candidate Greg Kennedy, says that from early adulthood, memory and other aspects of cognition slowly decline, with an increased risk of developing into dementia in later life. Why this occurs is unclear but research shows that exercise and levels of fitness can be protective. Chief among the health markers is a more elastic aorta.

Atherosclerosis in the aorta is the hardening of the aorta over time because of the build-up of plaque and the eventual tightening of the flow of blood resulting in the threat of strokes and heart disease. Diet, genetics, and aging all contribute to the rate of hardening in the aorta. A hardened aorta is not curable but the processes that lead to it can be slowed by making healthier choices and remaining fit.

Meaning, in order to mitigate the impact of aging, you have to start early in life; if you’re in your 20s it’s not too early to think about what your body and mind are going to need in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. And if you are older it is never too late to make the effort to be fitter because you can slow down the effects of aging.

This study specifically investigated whether fitness was associated with better cognition through a healthier aorta. The physical fitness and arterial stiffness of one hundred and two people (73 females and 29 males), aged between 60 and 90 years, living independently in aged care communities, were studied. Their fitness was assessed with the six-minute walk test which involved participants walking back and forth between two markers placed 10m (32 feet) apart for six minutes.

Only participants who completed the full six minutes were included in the analysis, which assessed the stiffness of their arteries and cognitive performance. Both fitness and aortic stiffness independently predicted Spatial Working Memory (SWM – the ability to keep spatial information active in working memory over a short period of time) performance.

Additionally, in conjunction with BMI and sex, fitness and aortic stiffness seemed to indicate SWM, independent of the age of the subject. As a result, the research concluded greater fitness and lower aortic stiffness both independently predict better SWM in older people. The strong effect of age on cognitive performance is obviously influenced by fitness and aortic stiffness.

“People generally are less fit and have stiffer arteries as they age, which seems to explain the difference in memory ability that is usually attributed to ‘getting older’,” Kennedy says. Interestingly, physical fitness did not seem to affect central arterial stiffness, however, Kennedy points out that only current fitness was assessed — long-term fitness may be a better predictor of central arterial stiffness, however, this has yet to be investigated.

“Unfortunately, there is currently no effective pharmacological intervention that has proven effective in the long term in reducing this decline or staving off dementia,” Kennedy says.

“The results of this study indicate that remaining as physically fit as possible, and monitoring central arterial health, may well be an important, cost-effective way to maintain our memory and other brain functions in older age.”

Reference:

1. Greg Kennedy, Denny Meyer, Roy J. Hardman, Helen Macpherson, Andrew B. Scholey, Andrew Pipingas. Physical Fitness and Aortic Stiffness Explain the Reduced Cognitive Performance Associated with Increasing Age in Older People. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2018; 63 (4): 1307

The post Stay Fit and Heart Healthy to Power Your Brain appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you if you’re young at heart.”

Frank Sinatra

“Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you if you’re young at heart.”

Frank Sinatra

“You’re only as old as you feel,” the saying goes. Most tend to agree with this insight, but putting this phrase into practice is another matter. As a coach, I have long encouraged clients to exceed their expectations and the societal limitations of aging. As evidence, I recently had a client in her fifties start running for the first time, and I’ve had many students begin to learn the craft of boxing after forty. It’s always been my firmly-held belief that our physical limitations are largely mental and how “old” we truly are is a function of attitude and what we do with our bodies.

Despite this being a grabby expression, it’s not just a cute catchphrase, and it rings true for many of us. Age is just a number and it doesn’t ultimately matter what that number says. It matters what you do with that number.

Determining Your “Fitness Age”

The New York Times Magazine ran a piece about a Norwegian study that evaluated almost 5,000 subjects to try and determine their true fitness age. The study used a full battery of tests – everything from BMI to cholesterol to VO2 max was measured. Some participants were pleasantly surprised with the findings, while others were shocked to find out they were significantly older than their actual age. Following the study, a website was created to give people a crack at determining their true fitness age. You can give it a go by clicking here.

The estimates are fairly general and the site hardly gives a scientific calculated VO2 max, but it’s an interesting insight nonetheless. Mine said my fitness age is 22, a full twenty years younger than my actual age! Of course, I wish there was a way to tell that number to my aching body, which presently feels like 62 rather than 22, but I guess I’ll take the 22 as a reminder to keep striving.

The Reality of Aging

Aging is one of those things that each and every one of us has to come to grips with at some point. There is no way to stop the wheels of time. Of course, the process itself is both a good and a bad thing. With age, hopefully, comes wisdom and perspective. However, getting older also brings aches and pains both literally and figuratively. Our bodies and minds learn and grow from setbacks, but we also tire and suffer pain as a result. On the physical side, our muscles atrophy and endurance capacity diminishes, but ultimately it’s up to us to do what we can with what we’ve got.

A few years back, another popular catchphrase was “thirty is the new twenty,” and so forth for each passing decade. While I found this to be true in my thirties, hitting forty brought a different saying to my experience. For me, forty has become the new seventy! So, I have felt both ends of the spectrum, at times feeling young at heart as well as feeling (much) older than I actually am.

The fitness calculator is a potentially a good check-in, validation, or motivation. We all want to feel and look our best, but we also need to do so with realism and humility. In my experience, being young is an attitude and a decision, much like being happy. So, if you’re stuck in a rut and feeling older than you are, here are a few tips to get you moving towards feeling young.

Ways to Keep Young at Heart

• Express grace and beauty – These are concepts that ultimately are not limited by time and aging. Find activities and interests that stimulate grace and beauty. Ask yourself if your body and mind are rigid and tense or relaxed and fluid? Indoors, find things like the martial arts, dance, and yoga. More importantly, make sure to find participation in movement in and around nature, where beauty and grace are found in abundance.
• Exercise and move where the young people are – I have a sixty-year-old in my boxing class. He likes the energy and the process of learning a new skill. Why not? Try a new sport or skill. Find a supportive and youthful activity or group that will support you without limiting you.
• Volunteer where the old people are – Young people (ideally) move well, and old people (hopefully) think well. Find those with lots of life experience and the humility to grow and learn that experience. Perspective can change your life. Go get some.
• Get out that bucket list and tape it to your mirror at home – Start crossing stuff off the list today. Summit a mountain, run a triathlon, trek the Andes, or cycle across your state.
• Find support in aging – Find a coach who will push you beyond your limits, but who does so with safety and empathy in mind. In addition to a coach for your body, find one for your mind, a counselor, spiritual advisor, or teacher who will help you push through your mental barriers. It is here where the real battle is fought. In the end, you’re only as old as you think you feel.

References:

1. Gretchen Reynolds “What’s Your ‘Fitness’ Age?” New York Times Magazine October 31, 2013.

2. Erin Skarda “Survey: People Aren’t Happiest Until They Reach Age 33” Time. March 29, 2012.

The post How to Calculate Your Fitness Age (Though Your True Age Is an Attitude) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Never tell me you’re too old. Never tell me it’s because you’re aging that you’re fat, sore, achy, can’t recover, not as strong, not as fit, or… The list of excuses laid at the feet of aging is maddening and mistaken.

Aging is society’s unconsciously agreed upon excuse for its laziness, for not taking personal responsibility for its own health and wellbeing. Even in CrossFit circles, where we are smashing preconceived notions of aging, I continue to hear these excuses – and from thirty-something-year-olds! Honestly and holy hell, please stop with the self-delusion and lies.

Age hasn’t stopped me from making it to the CrossFit Games as a Master’s Athlete.

The Myth of Aging

Aging isn’t a sentence that kicks into effect at exactly 27, 33, or forty years of age. It’s a process that can be slowed, and it’s a choice you make. In fact, aging is the accumulation of all the choices, decisions, and actions you take over the course of your lifetime.

The more consistently your daily choices and actions are health promoting, the more prolonged your experience of the fountain of youth will be. The opposite is also true. The poorer the choices you make and the harder you treat your body, the more rapidly aging sets in.

“Aging is a bullshit myth that society has sleepily agreed to indulge and use to excuse itself for its laziness. It’s like a drug that people have become addicted to. It’s an excuse for opting out and giving up.”

“But it’s different for me,” people tell me. Really? How? You have two arms, two legs, and a brain. You choose what you put in your body, what environments and people you expose yourself to, what information you allow into your head, how much sleep you get, the quality of your nutrition, whether you hydrate yourself, and what exercise you get. You choose to stress or not. You choose to self-abuse (coffee, drugs, alcohol, sugar, TV, chemicals, cigarettes, junk food) or not. You choose to fight for your dreams or not. You choose laziness or mental toughness. The list is endless. You literally choose aging – or not.

Age Doesn’t Say “I Can’t”

“I’m 64,” you say. “I could never swim 53 hours (110 miles) straight, in the open ocean, to make it from Cuba to Florida.” Really? Diana Nyad did. And at 64 years of age, she was the first person to ever do so – after five attempts that spanned 36 years of her life.

Diana Nyad spoke about her experience at a TED conference.

“I’m 42. I’m too old to make the Olympic Games.” Really? Dara Torres did, and she won three silver medals – at her fifth Olympic Games.

“I’m 70. I could never compete in the Lanzarote Ironman.” Really? Eddie Brocklesby did and became the oldest woman to ever complete the course. She began running at 52 years of age, but had never trained before that.

Eddie Brockelsby offers some words of encouragement to aspiring triathletes.

What sets these people apart? What sets any champion apart? Choices, actions, and discipline. That’s it. That’s the “miracle cure” to aging. The magic bullet, the pill everyone wants the doctor to prescribe.

You can’t sit at a desk all day; smash sugar, coffee, and energy drinks; watch TV and computer screens for hours on end; stress about everything while you chase the outward signs of affluence; smoke, eat out all the time, and stay up late; hate your job, drink to relax, and take medication for everything; get little exercise, war with your family, and hate yourself. If you want a recipe for aging, any of these ingredients in any quantities will do it.

Take Care of Yourself

Cells age. How you treat them determines how you age. A dehydrated cell has a shrunken and shriveled appearance, rather than an appealing round and consistent appearance. This alone dramatically affects the way things like nutrients, minerals, trace elements, and fluids are able to cross the cell’s membrane.

If your cells aren’t able to exchange nutrients within their environment (you), your body cannot maintain its systems with ease and efficiency. Your body will overwork and underperform. It will steal bits from here to plug up holes there.

“You have choices. Every thought, word, action, and deed is a choice. It is a step in the direction of the fountain of youth or a giant leap toward premature aging.”

The body is a clever, adaptive machine, but it can ultimately work against itself. Its primary goal is to keep you alive, so to achieve that aim it will rob itself of nutrients in one area to fuel another area or critical to life support. You can imagine the consequences as this goes on over the years – deficiencies, inefficiencies, inflammation – nothing good.

Keep Your Nutrition Clean

And that’s only talking on the level of a dehydrated cell. We haven’t even considered the consequences of chemicals, toxins, irritants, and foreign particles (things we think are “food” but are far from it) introduced into the body through skin, lungs, and digestive tract.

When we ingest fake foods (stuff that is highly processed, containing food additives, colorings, chemicals, neurotoxins, etc.) our body responds by launching a battle against the foreign invader. You may or may not notice this at first. A drop in energy, bloating, headache, irritable bowel, flatulence, puffy eyes, hay fever, irritability, indigestion, mood swings, itchiness, achy joints, dry skin, cravings, inability to concentrate, rashes, runny nose, phlegmy throat, fat fingers, red cheeks – the list of reactions is endless.

Nothing will age you faster than overly processed food – especially anything you obtain via a drive-thru window.

These symptoms can be subtle at first, but over time, as your body is fed these fake foods daily, these symptoms can become permanent and exacerbated. They are evidence of the body’s immune system working overtime to rid itself of invaders. This battle creates systemic inflammation as the body fights to rid itself of the foreign particles.

So instead of maintaining and growing, the body is wasting its resources and energy on warring with itself. The war against aging is the war against inflammation. And, again, the choice is always yours.

Win the War Against Aging

If you want to win the war against aging, here are my top eleven tips for crushing the competition:

1. Give a shit.
2. Take responsibility for your choices.
3. Drink three to six liters of clean, quality water per day. I add Vital Greens to mine for added vitamin, mineral, and nutrient value.
4. Eat predominantly hormone-free, grass-fed meats and proteins (all of them, including free-range eggs), raw unsalted nuts (not peanuts), lots of green veggies, some carbs (white rice, sweet potato, quinoa), and a little fruit.
5. Stay away from sugar, wheat, dairy, food colorings, preservatives, brightly packaged fake foods, alcohol, cigarettes, take-out meals, and excess salt.
6. Take high-quality fish oils, glucosamine, magnesium, and vitamin C daily. See a naturopath regularly to determine exactly what is depleted and treat it (consider this a bit like servicing your car).
7. Get a minimum of eight hours of blissful sleep per night – every night.
8. Exercise like a mofo. Do not be afraid to push your limits. In fact, you must push your limits to grow stronger and fitter over time.
9. Recover like a beast. Get a weekly massage, do a gentle yoga class, float weekly, meditate daily, spend time in nature daily (even just a few minutes looking at the stars, the birds, the dogs, or the sunrise), cultivate childlike wonder.
10. Be the most positive sucker in the gym. Smile, see the positive in everything, relish challenges, gleefully look for ways to make shit harder, listen to positive podcasts and audiobooks, seek out like-minded people and spend time with them. Be the kind of role model the world needs.
11. Live passionately and purposefully – no matter the evidence against you.

Age Is Just a Number

Aging is a bullshit myth that society has sleepily agreed to indulge and use to excuse itself for its laziness. It’s like a drug that people have become addicted to. It’s an excuse for opting out and giving up.

I say “no” to aging – and you can, too. You have choices. Every thought, word, action, and deed is a choice. It is a step in the direction of the fountain of youth or a giant leap toward premature aging.

I know where I’m spending my time, money, energy, and passion – how about you?

You might also like:

• Why Age Is Only A Number
• How To Calculate Your Fitness Age (Though Your True Age Is An Attitude)
• The Simple Path To Being Your Fittest At Any Age
• Getting Older Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Compete

The post Aging Is B.S. – The Myth Of Missed Opportunities appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

While athletes might experience a later prime, their lack of proper human movement patterns and foundational stability often lead to compensations that manifest in major injuries by the time they graduate high school. Even if you are an athlete, the hours spent at practice are not enough to offset the constant sitting at school and at home, your rounded posture while you stare at your phone screen, and the fast food lifestyle that dominates the other hours of your day.

The Accepted Human Decline

Our standard model has been to separate mind and body. Few understand the interconnectedness of movement, proper nutrition, energy, and optimal mental acuity. Generally, people only think about eating and activity as a means to improve physique, and don’t care about the bigger picture until they’re forced to. Few people think about the necessity, benefit, and joy of strong, mobile, agile, and controlled movement, until their potential for it vanishes.

We don’t do a lot to promote movement among 30- and 40-year-olds—in fact, we do less than with teens. It’s accepted that your body goes to hell by the time you’re 30, and from then on, it’s a downward slope of losing physical skills and experiencing more aches and pains. Then around retirement age, people start to care about their health again, because a lifetime of neglect has taken its toll. They have a laundry list of health issues and prescriptions, and are forced to see the consequences of the model society gave them.

One wonders if the 60-year-olds referenced in the study above move more than they did in their 30s and 40s. Has the immediacy of their health situation and their impending mortality finally moved them into a respect for their health and activity levels?

A Bleak Future

What does the future look like for our shockingly motionless teens? How likely are they to move and appreciate movement during their typically sedentary 30s and 40s, particularly when their bodies weigh and ache more on average than past generations?

Are we really okay with giving this standard model of life to our kids? While this latest study has gotten plenty of attention in the media, it should come as no shock. The warning signs are everywhere. Parents all have seen the lethargy and isolation brought about by today’s digital culture. Scan any public place, and kids are less likely to be running, jumping, and growing a personality (at the expense of their parent’s sanity). More likely, they are quietly sitting, pacified by the glow of the iPad. One need only examine our typical school day to see that it doesn’t get a lot better when they leave home.

So what do we do about it? When will we start to take seriously our duty to instill the tools and mindset in our next generation that will allow them to thrive? We’ve obsessed over providing for them materially, but this does not create great people, nor happy people.

We Have to Think Long Term

Adults must have the wisdom to see the long-term benefit of discipline, and know what values they are trying to instill. Unfortunately, good information and education on health and fitness is not ubiquitous. While I contend it should be the true core of education for all people, our educational institutions have not concurred.

In my job, I’m constantly talking to athletes and students about nutrition. One day, I entered the training room to see the typical buffet of fast food and give my typical rant, when one athlete asked, “Why does it matter? I look fine and don’t need to worry about those things until we get older.” He was sincere. In his eyes, health was only a concern for the elderly.

But he doesn’t know how lucky he is. He’s a great athlete, and has made it to age 16 with no outwardly obvious health-related ailments, other than the typical chronic sleepiness from poor sleep habits. Still, like most of his classmates, he could live a far more energized, mentally and physically vital life with better health, if he only understood how.

His sentiment highlights our odd thought process. It won’t matter until later, so let’s all dive into the soda and fast food at every meal, and sit all day. The results of these habits are cumulative, and they are deadlier than smoking. Somehow, we have no problem teaching kids the dangers of smoking, while pouring them their morning bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

Where Should Change Begin?

Where do we start to fix the way our culture actively promotes poor health? We should all demand intelligent changes in public policy. For instance, our government subsidizes corn production, which is why high fructose corn syrup (about the same as any added sugar) is so cheap and omnipresent. Government subsidies are the biggest reason why bad food is so cheap. One proposed solution is to quit subsidizing corn, and instead subsidize apples, greens, and other more nutritious products. Then we’d see apples become cheaper than a Butterfinger.

As with any necessary change, there would be some short-term transitional pains, but the overwhelming benefit would be tremendous. The arguments against this are the same ones Blockbuster tried to make against the rise of Redbox and Netflix. History moves forward.

Next, let’s set our sights on the primary cultural nucleus: schools. This should be the foundational launch point to fix societal issues. Schools should make lifelong mental, physical, and emotional health their primary mission. This would require them to clarify a vision and stand up for what they believe in. Schools exist for human development, and it is their responsibility to lead the charge to counteract any pattern that presents a significant impediment to fulfillment.

But more than just schools, every gym in America should be broadcasting this message and setting up affordable camps to help change patterns. Every institution and organization from colleges, to religious camps, to dentists’ waiting rooms should be championing the value of nutrition and movement.

Let’s Work Together

Technology is not neutral. It seeks to addict our minds and keep us scrolling and checking back in every few minutes. Food is not neutral, either. Food companies intentionally seek to create addictive patterns to foods that do long-term harm. School and society must not be neutral, either. We must value health.

All of us in the fitness industry can unite behind this message. We can drop any insistence that ours is the only way, and join together to change these deeply entrenched societal patterns. A rising tide lifts all ships, and this unity of effort will only result in rising memberships and greater success for everyone. But beyond money, most in the industry seek a greater purpose for fitness, and I contend that this is it! Culture needs to change, and that can only happen if and when we unite.

The post Sixteen Going on Sixty – Fitness in Decline for the Young appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But even as many are finding that fitness is not the sole province of the young, there are a few precautions you need to take as father time has sneakily crept in. Here, you’ll find a few principles needing some attention as you embark on a new era of your training.

If you’re reading this, you likely fall into one of two general camps:

1. You’ve lifted for a few years, have some experience under your belt, and are in need of a few pointers about how to adjust your training.
2. You’re brand new to resistance training, and need a quick primer on the unexplored terrain.

Here are a few things for both camps to consider at 40 and beyond.

Understand What You’re Up Against

If you’re the typical 40-year-old, you have a full-time job, a family, and other social obligations that preclude you from attending to training as you once did at 20. You now have a busier lifestyle and unpredictable schedule complications. There’s a good chance that you want to accomplish with your training has shifted as well. You no longer wish to be the biggest, baddest dude in the gym. You simply want to add some muscle, lose some fat, and do it all pain-free.

Comparing yourself to (potentially much younger) fellow gym members is a potential pitfall. But the onslaught of gym bros on social media can also play with your head. You were once young too, and got away with sketchy things in the gym. But allow the wisdom of your age to overpower your ego and nostalgia. Don’t go down the black hole of following others as they throw caution to the wind—especially those 20 years your junior.

We all know (and bemoan) that our metabolisms slow as we age. Beyond putting on a few pounds, this will have a direct effect on your recovery ability. But that isn’t a death sentence. You can still practice habits to get optimal results and improve metabolism, recovery, and progress. If you’re the seasoned lifter, you’ll have the advantage of only needing to tweak a few things, since you’ve built a solid foundation. On the other hand, if you’re a newbie, you’ll need to develop healthy and effective habits from the start, so that you can reap some big rewards and stay injury-free.

Find Your Fire and Keep It Burning

Even though you may no longer desire to be the big man on campus, you will still need to draw your motivation from somewhere. Whatever your goals, from losing weight, to adding muscle, to just becoming more mobile, your motivation needs to be alive and well in order to optimally progress. Clearly defining your goals will go a long way to solidifying that motivation. Get down to brass tacks and detail your plan of attack. Set specific mini-goals, such as losing five pounds of fat or gaining three pounds of muscle per month.

While you’re defining those goals, ensure that they are both realistic and attainable. In the post-forty landscape, you aren’t likely to win Mr. Universe, but you can make significant progress and improve your physique and overall wellbeing. Just set forth realistic and achievable goals, and take it step by step.

To keep making progress toward your goals, you first have to stay healthy. That means no skipping pre-workout warm ups and post-training mobility. Whether you’ve been in the iron game for years or are new to the resistance training arena, you’ll need to make a habit of performing a pre- and post-workout routine for all major areas that are susceptible to tightness and injury.

Don’t get caught up in programs with unnecessary complexity and movements that defy all logic. Whether you’re 20 or 40, the basics still work. After four decades of wear and tear, your body might ask you to make a few adjustments to some exercises, but the principles still remain the same. The big, multi-joint compound lifts coupled with progressive programming are ageless, universal principles. For example, if you find you suffer from lower back painduring heavy barbell back squats, a sensible replacement would be rear foot elevated Bulgarian split squats. Barbell presses can be replaced by dumbbell presses. Chest-supported rows and inverted rows can replace bent-over rows.

Whatever your situation, there is always a workaround, and that has to include fitting your workouts into your normal life. One of the mistakes that every young lifter makes is to only train under perfect circumstances. When outside factors like a shift in schedule, abnormal eating patterns, or less than optimal training equipment get in the way, they feel “off,” and tend to inadvertently give it less than their best effort. As we get older, these wrenches in the machine happen more often. You need to learn to be flexible with your training so that you can apply the same discipline and determination no matter what the circumstance.

The Build Muscle After 40 Program

Below is an example of a training program designed for the 40+ crowd. It includes all of the factors listed above. Whether you’re an experienced lifter looking to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, or a late-starting newbie who wants to kick things off the right way, this is for you. 

This program can easily fit into four days out of every week, such as Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. You can either treat Wednesdays and the weekends as rest days, or partake in a recreational activity or active recovery such as walking, jogging, swimming, or biking. You can choose any schedule you like, just make sure you aren’t training more than two days consecutively.

End each day with a thorough stretching session, and perform the program for 4-6 weeks. After that, either take a week off from training but remain active, or cut back on volume and intensity for a week before restarting the program.

Warm Up

Before each workout, perform two rounds of 10 reps each of the following circuit:

• Squat jump
• Push up
• Alternating lunge
• Inverted row
• Bicycle crunch

The post You Can Build Muscle After 40 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Proper eccentric loading can bring immense strength and mass gain benefits, and help develop flexibility. Muscle fibers also have a much higher eccentric loading potential than contractile force, so introducing eccentrics properly can be a critical factor in breaking through strength plateaus.

Eccentrics and the Aging Athlete

I offer a different view on eccentrics. While they are great for all of the above reasons, they offer other massive benefits not often thought of in the mainstream discussion.

Eccentric loading is the most important training stimulus for the aging population. Period.

Imagine the last time you watched an elderly individual cautiously take a step down. Perhaps they had to turn sideways, hold the doorway or railing, and exercise extreme caution. But when they take the same step up, they do it in stride, without a second thought.

No one falls going up the stairs; they only fall going down.

Coordination and balance hinge on eccentric strength. We can define concentric (or contractile or shortening) phases as our ability to create movement, and eccentric phases as our ability to stop or resist movement.

Concentrics are your gas pedal. Eccentrics are your brakes. Skilled race car drivers are not defined by their ability to step on the gas; anyone can do that. Winning a race (and avoiding disaster) relies on their ability to control, manage, and resist their speed effectively. This same concept applies to high-level athletes, general trainees, and the aging population alike. Physical mastery depends much more on our abilities to control and slow our limbs and external weight than on our ability to incite motion.

The most detrimental physical aspect of aging is loss of coordination and control. Losing the ability and awareness to place your steps, and recover from missteps, turns into a serious hazard later in life. While studies show that muscle tissue retains eccentric strength better than contractile force during aging,¹ both decline rapidly, as much as 40% from age 25 to 80.²

Eccentrics offer a two-pronged approach to aging gracefully. They incite muscular growth and strength for a population rapidly losing both. Eccentric control also develops coordination and balance, the two most functional attributes to maintain and strengthen your physicality while aging.

Check out the video for methods to implement functional eccentrics. These will help the aging population maintain strong and capable bodies, and also help athletes at every level build strength, balance, and stability.

References:

1. Roig, Marc, Donna L. MacIntyre, Janice J. Eng, Marco V. Narici, Constantinos N. Maganaris, and W. Darlene Reid. “Preservation of eccentric strength in older adults: Evidence, mechanisms and implications for training and rehabilitation.” Experimental Gerontology 45, no. 6 (2010): 400-409.

2. Gault, Mandy L., and Mark ET Willems. “Aging, functional capacity and eccentric exercise training.” Aging and Disease 4, no. 6 (2013): 1-13.

The post Eccentric Strength to Fight the Aging Process appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

1. 35 years old or older
2. Has children

Inevitably, the talk will turn to stories of the glory days when they looked better, had more energy, could lift heavier and more often, were less sore, never injured, and on and on. They can’t figure out how to get it back. It must be diet, right? Maybe that miracle missing supplement? Training philosophy? Demanding kids taking up precious training time? Stress (isn’t this the same as kids)? There are so many variables to consider!

Recently, like most aging fitness junkies, I have begun to ponder my physical decline and search for answers (I’m thirty-seven with three children, by the way). My search has led me to a training and sports psychology approach I use with all of my masters-age athletes. Based on the results we’ve garnered I’d like to suggest a different and somewhat obvious variable. 

Realization #1: Time Has Changed You

You can’t do what you once could because you are now different. People change. We have busier lives, collect injuries, indulge in cheat meals, and lose some of the vitality we once had. Realize you now have new limitations to go along with your aspirations. Even if you had perfect form on every movement you’ve ever done, zero injuries and flawless nutrition, you are still most likely walking around riddled with nagging pains just like the rest of us.

As for the rest of us: in our twenties (and if we’re being honest, our thirties, too), we were stupid. We didn’t listen to people more experienced when they told us to treat our bodies right. We pushed too hard and in the wrong ways. If you’re lucky, you’ve come out of that period of your life with some mobility/stability and limited injuries to nurse.

Take inventory right now. My guess is you’ll find at least five muscles/joints/tendons that are bothering you—three of which have been bothering you for a while. Our masters athletes are required to constantly monitor and take inventory of what their bodies are telling them, and provide us with ongoing feedback. This conversation can shape the training plan for twelve weeks or even one day. We are not dogmatic with programming.

Some days, the majority of our training sessions end up just warming up and getting the body moving through a range of motion. Plans are wonderful, but don’t get stuck in the old “stick to the plan” fable. By not listening—and I mean really listening—to your body, you’ll only grind your training to a halt by measuring your current performance against the yardstick of your past.

Success as a masters athlete is about taking what your body can give you on the day. [Photo credit: J Perez Imagery]

Realization #2: You Were Never Really That Good

Stop measuring yourself against the exaggerated super-you that lives only in your memory. It isn’t a perfect representation of actual events. Memory is constructive—or more to the point, reconstructive. We take actual events and reshape them based on variables too numerous to mention. Remember your first kiss? Sure you do, but your experiences since have helped to create a new version of that moment. You might remember it as better (or more awkward) than it actually was.

The same is true with your fitness. In short, you probably never had amazing abs, nor did you bench 300lb—at least not for what the powerlifting community would consider a “good rep.” It’s much more likely you had a sort-of-flat stomach and one time you had close to 300lb on the bar that you took to half-depth with four people spotting you. Still pretty good, but not exactly accurate. I recently found myself telling someone my max squat was 575lb, but in truth I can’t actually remember how much it was, and it wasn’t at a sanctioned event. I can see the lift and the plates and I seem to remember going to depth, but who knows? That was over a decade ago.

Be honest with yourself as you set goals, and base your training off of those goals. The best practice is to benchmark now. Imagine my surprise when I grabbed a barbell to attempt a 1RM back squat ten years after my alleged 575lb, only to find out four plates per side felt like a house on my back. It will only deflate and sidetrack your training to base percentages and volume off a number that might have never existed. Start fresh and program to compliment your current capabilities.

Align Your Goals With Your Real Life

While I love working with young athletes whose legs are fresh and lives are uncomplicated by comparison, the bulk of my clients are over the age of forty. In a given week, our training sessions can vary from amazing to low-energy based on sleep, diet and work schedules. It’s important to make sure our goals and training plans are flexible in order to be aligned with their actual lives. We are intense and seek our goals passionately, but our journey is intelligently planned prior to embarking.

Take a look at yourself right now. Take a look at your life, your schedule, your stressors and the new rules for your body. Take a look at how you feel today and the injuries you’re nursing. Take a look at the goals you have. Do they match? Are they realistic?

We live in a world of online clips of amazing feats of strength; of thirty-second commercials featuring 90-year-old Ironman competitors who say things like, “I don’t let excuses stop me from greatness.” Well, good for them. They aren’t you. Use today to find your baseline and pick measurable goals you can safely reach. Do your rehab and prehab. Warm up, and then warm up again. Have fun with your training sessions and don’t get bogged down in what once was. And lastly, make sure the intelligence of your training is equal to the intensity.

How do you set goals when your body is in decline?

Facing the Second Half of Your Fitness Life

The post Not as Good as I Once Was: Training in Your 30s and Beyond appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound with one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.” 

–Steven Pressfield

Willie Mays is arguably the greatest baseball player that ever lived. Mays was a 24-time All-Star who amassed 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and a career batting average of over .300. Yet if you were a New York Mets fan in 1973, you might remember Mays as a part-time centerfielder who hit a paltry .211 that year. One of baseball’s all-time greats ended his career unceremoniously as a subpar bench player. Granted, Mays retired at 41 years old, and lasted much longer than most athletes do. But even the great Willie Mays found out the hard way that all good things must some day come to an end.

There’s an old adage that states that athletes die twice. Before they stop breathing, first their careers end. But it isn’t just pro athletes that face the reality of decay, atrophy, and the ‘death’ of their youthful physical identity; we all do. One day we’re on top of our game in sport, fitness, and in our physicality. And then one day, we’re not. At some point your sports career or fitness pedigree will diminish. We might proactively recognize this horizon, but more often than not, this transition is ‘forced’ upon us: As an aging star athlete, you are cut from the team. The doctor says you have to stop competing. Your mind is willing, but your body says ‘no mas.’ Ultimately, all of us who compete on the field of play or express ourselves through our physicality will face the down side of the bell curve.

The arena of sport and fitness are predicated on wins, progress, and infinite growth, which are fallacies when it comes to the limits of physics and aging. When we stop to think about it, the concept of a ‘second half’ may sound like a nightmare to many. But this transition need not be a depressing and bumpy road. The ‘second half’ of your fitness life and aging as an athlete is simply a new horizon. Whether you feel like you’ve got two halves or four seasons, here’s how you can age gracefully and make the most of your journey all the way to the finish line.

Our training is rightfully marked by progression and the desire to be better. [Photo credit: Cara Kobernik]

Understanding the Second Half

I first learned about the ‘second half’ of life after facing the trauma of divorce. With my world turned upside down, I started searching for a new identity. Instead of defining myself by my relationships, possessions, or even my physicality, I started asking different questions and looking at different defining criteria. A counselor suggested I read Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward, which talked about the distinct ‘two halves’ of life. As my 40-year-old body started to break down, I recognized that I had also entered a new half in my fitness life.

The second half isn’t about reaching a certain age; it occurs at different points for everyone. The recently-retired (he says) Michael Phelps is preparing for his second half at just 31 years old. At 27, another Olympic swimmer, Lt. Brad Snyder, had to define a new life and physicality after losing his sight to an IED in Afghanistan. Synder went on to represent his country as an athlete instead of a soldier, winning 5 gold medals at the London and Rio Paralympic Games in the 50m, 100m, and 400m freestyle.

Whether you’re 25 or 55, at some point, some day you will have to face the music. Bigger, faster, stronger, or more defined don’t happen forever. There simply isn’t enough botox or HGH to keep you looking younger or getting stronger year after year.

It can be a difficult process to let go. When we compete at a high level and grow physically and athletically, all feels right with the world. Defining ourselves by our athletic accomplishments and our physical prowess feels great when we’re on top. But at some point, we will all face the realization that it’s time to retire, switch gears, or compete in a new realm. As we grapple with reaching middle age and the changing physical landscape that follows, the question many struggle with is, “now what?”

How to Play the Second Half

Here are the steps to age gracefully as an athlete and embrace the second half of your fitness life:

Face the music: The first step in the second half is the admission that the jig is up. This isn’t always an easy task. One of life’s cruel ironies is that our greatest strengths at some point end up becoming our achilles heel. The same mindset that says, “I can’t be beat, I refuse to lose, and I can do it!” is the one that will impede the ability to know when enough is enough.

There are three general ways that we learn to recognize the need for a new path physically:

1. Diminished returns: You start getting weaker, slower, etc., even though you’re still putting the work in.
2. Physical breakdown: Your mind is willing, but your body is unable to bounce back. You start to accrue a list of nagging injuries.
3. The peanut gallery: Others will simply tell us, if we’re willing to listen.

Around the time I was going through my divorce and my body turned 40, a man who I respected said to me, “Eric you can either age gracefully, or foolishly. The choice is yours.” Fortunately, I listened to him. My body was tired, beat up, and chronically injured. I knew it was time for the second half of my fitness life.

Mourn: Anyone who has ever been downsized, fired, divorced, cut from a team, or permanantely injured knows that the loss of identity is a harrowing experience. In sport and fitness, mourning the loss of your previously-defined self means the transition from a ‘current’ to a ‘former:’ The former star athlete, the former body builder, the former hard body. Part of loss is going through the stages of grief. Fortunately, grief tends to dissipate with time, and after you’ve said your tearful goodbyes, it will be time to say hello to new beginnings.

Surrender: As addicts know, the first steps in recovery are the recognition of the problem and the willingness to change. But after that moment comes the hard part: doing the work. There are many glaring examples of those in the public eye to that fight tooth and nail against aging. Some seem to cheat the system and manipulate their physicality in a desperate attempt to hold on to the glory of youth at all costs. But in a race against father time, the only ultimate choice is surrender.

As we near the second half of life, there is temptation to fight through pain, push through diminished returns, and override the signals from your body. But doing so merely delays the inevitable and only causes more pain, injury, and disappointment. While some hold the concept of surrender in a negative connotation, surrender is far cry from quitting. Facing change and forming a new identity is courageous. Furthermore, defining your physicality in the second half is fraught with new and exciting challenges. As you surrender to age, you gain new freedoms in letting go of impossible expectations, and the hope that a fresh perspective brings.

Define the new plan: It isn’t gutsy to play through pain, it isn’t sexy to pretend you are 30 when you’re 50, and it isn’t cool to keep competing when your body breaks down. It’s arrogant. Real courage is having the willingness to try something new. But more important than new physical plan is the defining characteristic in the second half: the change of heart. That is, the second half is defined by introspection as much as it is expression. That is, the pursuits of the first half of your physical life—to be a star athlete, or have a ripped physique—give way to the more important questions of your second half.

• How can I age gracefully?
• How can I continue to move well?
• How can I express beauty in both an inner sense and an outward expression?
• How can I help inspire, motivate, and teach others on my journey in fitness, sport, and wellness?
• How can I define the seasons of my fitness life? For instance, going from student to competitor, from competitor to teacher/leader/coach/mentor, and finally to student again.

Embrace Life’s Metaphors

Sport, fitness, and training are metaphors for life. We train with the seasons and we face new beginnings at the start of each training cycle. Our training is rightfully marked by progression and the desire to be better. But every athlete knows that you can’t have your foot on the gas at all times. Instead, we look at training through the lens of sport seasons and periodization.

Lost in the shuffle is the fact that while each season starts anew, there is only one season in the long run: the season of life. At some point, you aren’t going to get stronger or younger looking. At some point you will recognize it’s time for a change. That new beginning is the second half of your fitness life. In some ways it marks a new identity and new way of expressing your physicality. Most importantly though, the second half is marked by the willingness to reexamine the criteria by which we evaluate our success as physical beings. Halftime presents an opportunity to reflect and make the choice to age gracefully, not foolishly.

More on training mindset and planning:

What’s the Point? Check In With Your Goals

The post Facing the Second Half of Your Fitness Life appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Despite some of the negative changes, being thirty is pretty awesome so far.

One of the biggest problems with young athletes is that youth is basically magic. You can walk into a gym, swing a few weights around, and as long as you use a heavy enough weight and something somewhat resembling technique, you’ll probably make progress. Some kids don’t even need that much. It’s almost like they can look at the weights threateningly and add pounds to their bench press.

The problem, of course, is that habits you forge while you’re young will probably stay with you into your older years. In this article I’m going to talk about all the dumb shit I did in my twenties that I would have been better off without.

Pretending to Train Like an Elite Athlete

I’m not a natural athlete. Any athletic accomplishments I have to my name were achieved through cleverness and hard work, not a near bottomless pit of undifferentiated athleticism. Despite this, when I was a twenty-something, every time I saw a new workout plan for some professional athlete I had to try it.

Program hopping is bad enough. Program hopping because a plan that was never meant for you didn’t help you achieve the results it wasn’t designed for is an altogether deeper level of youth-induced silliness.

“The program an Olympic gold medalist is following now is not the program he or she followed fifteen or twenty years ago when first starting. If you’ve only been lifting for a few months, following the program Kendrick Farris is using is completely inappropriate.”

First off, it’s unlikely you’d ever come across the actual training program used by a celebrity or professional athlete unless you’re on a first-name basis with the coach. The stuff that’s disseminated through the media is usually either watered down or lacking in context. A program is one piece of the puzzle. Pros usually have access to recovery methods and nutrition well beyond the means of the average trainee.

There’s also another factor most people miss, particularly where professional athletes are concerned. The program an Olympic gold medalist is following now is not the program he or she followed fifteen or twenty years ago when first starting. If you’ve only been lifting for a few months, following the program Kendrick Farris is using is completely inappropriate. Some people find this offensive, as if assuming you can do what one of the best lifters in the world can do when you’ve only got a few months under your belt isn’t. Respect the process. The process is everything.

I’m learning to respect the process and not to rush things.

Believing I Was Invincible

Sometimes I go back and forth on this. I firmly believe most training-related injuries are avoidable with a bit of self-awareness and basic know-how. I honestly think the reason most people get hurt isn’t because of biomechanics or loading schemes. Far as I can tell, most people who get hurt simply aren’t trying to avoid it.

“Now that I’m in my thirties, minor issues definitely take longer to resolve than they did a few years ago, but overall I have far less pain than I did in my twenties.”

The reality of injury is that most of the time people don’t care about getting hurt until they already are. To be fair, a lot of the knowledge I now possess was the direct result of one problem or another. Injury can be a great teacher, but looking back at the years of good training I missed out on due to a battery of nagging injuries, I wish I’d cared more about prevention.

Now that I’m in my thirties, minor issues definitely take longer to resolve than they did a few years ago, but overall I have far less pain than I did in my twenties. Frankly, that’s kind of embarrassing. Shame on you twenty-year-old, Bob. Shame.

Not Paying Attention to Basic Maintenance

A week or so ago I stumbled across a thread on a fitness forum that started with a post asking, “How important is sleep, really?” The discussion contained therein was equal parts frustrating and horrifying.

The majority of posts were arguing or claiming that as long as you’re not tired, sleep isn’t that important. I pointed out how integral sleep is in terms of overall recovery and regulating hormone production and was immediately met by angry tirades claiming, “Whatever, bro. I can sleep an hour a night and I feel fine.” Sigh.

I get it. When I was in my early to mid twenties I used to work eleven hours straight, train my ass off, and then party all night for days on end. I, too, felt fine at the time. The issue really isn’t how you feel – it’s all of the progress you’re missing out on. I’m hardly advocating the life of a monk, but if you’re on day three of a Netflix-and-pizza bender, maybe go to sleep a little early and trade that fourth slice for a couple glasses of water.

Pizza and Netflix are great, but so is sleep.

My sleeping, eating, and drinking habits were less than perfect through my twenties. I made significant progress in my training, but when I think back I have to shake my head. One of the most profound improvements to my quality of life was the result of forcing myself to sleep eight hours a night. So simple it borders on stupid – but ask yourself, when was the last time you got a solid eight hours?

Prioritizing One Aspect of Fitness at the Expense of All Others

Balance has never been a strength of mine. I’m good at putting everything I have into one thing and doing it the best I possibly can. While this approach has its benefits, in terms of fitness it means that throughout many of my younger years I was playing tug of war with my physical preparation.

“One of the biggest problems with young athletes is that youth is basically magic. You can walk into a gym, swing a few weights around, and as long as you use a heavy enough weight and something somewhat resembling technique, you’ll probably make progress.”

I would get really strong and then stop lifting and do only cardio or conditioning. I would get really ripped and then stop running to focus on lifting again (because everyone knows running kills gainz #science). Again, I’m happy with where I am currently, but when I think of where I could be if I had held onto all the progress I’d made it makes me a little sad.

Not Eating Carbs

My time in undergrad was probably the height of the carb-a-phobic craze. For years, I avoided rice, bread, and anything even remotely processed because I knew it was “the devil” and would probably murder my soul. I looked good and felt all right, but again, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

I hit a terrible plateau in my late twenties. I was lethargic and all my lifts and times stalled hard. Then I ate a sandwich and my deadlift went up by a hundred pounds. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but all jokes aside I added a lot of weight to all of my lifts simply by adding carbs back into my diet.

Sometimes you just need to eat a sandwich.

What’s on Your List?

The list goes on. Avoiding steady-state cardio. Drinking too much coffee and not enough water. Not going to the doctor when I was sick or concerned about an injury. None of these mistakes were egregious when taken on their own, but the sum was significant.

It’s easy to get away with bad habits when you’re young, but eventually they’re going to catch up to you. So, what have you been getting away with lately?

More Like This:

• The Gifts of Being Forty-Five
• What I Learned From Deadlifting 500 Pounds
• A Simple 4-Step Mobility System for Every Lifter
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos 1, 3, and 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

The post Reflections on Being 30 (And the Dumb S*#! I Did in My 20s) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Aging, if done correctly, is full of beauty, comedy, wisdom and enlightenment. It’s a great ride with plenty of ups and downs. You can save yourself years of trouble, pain, and calamity by accepting that successful people adapt to aging, that the rules of biology apply to you, and that education is your best friend.

By all means, do not go gently into that good night, just make sure you rage against the dying of the light with the one thing we all forget to use in the beginning: our heads. Here’s are the top five training mistakes made after turning 35 and how you can avoid them.

RELATED: Coming to Terms With Being an Aging Athlete 

1. You Still Believe You Can Do It Like You’re 25

We all know that the personal record days coming off a pizza-and-beer all-nighter are over. But even when we clean up our diet and lifestyle, we still want to train like we did when we were in our twenties. With all the same volumes, rep schemes, intervals, and non-recovery days, and all the sexy programs we see in the magazines and on the Internet.

This makes no sense. And you know it because you feel like shit and can’t “keep up” with “those damn kids” anymore.

Science tells us our metabolism is slowing down, it takes longer to recover (recovery is the unsexy place where growth happens in training) and changes in sleep patterns and circadian rhythms occur, which means you will probably sleep less at night and not sleep as deeply. All bad news for training.

So what do you do during this transitional period? Easy. Grow up.

2. You Still Think More Is Better

More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better. Understanding this is vital to your continuous improvement.

Your training program must be a progression toward your goal, whatever that goal may be. Yes, training can absolutely have the appearance of randomness, but it absolutely cannot be randomly programmed. 

“More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better.”

Periodization in an intelligent must-have. Your program must allow for the proper rebuilding of broken-down tissue between sessions. This takes longer as you age, and you’re best off seeking the help of a professional when it comes to programming. Programming is as much art as it is science.

Mechanics and body alignment (i.e. mobility), as well as technique, play a huge role in your training sessions as joints age. Joint pain is not okay and is, in fact, a biomarker for injury. Don’t be afraid to seek out new strategies and new techniques. Play. Experiment. Adapt. Overcome.

Remember, abundance and complications are the way of youth. Quality and simplification are the challenge of adulthood. Think on this. Apply it to your training.

3. You Have No Respect for the Most Insidious Device Invented

This piece of equipment drives sedentary behavior, is practically unavoidable for most of us; is a major cause of those tight sensations in our hips and hamstrings; weakens our stabilizing muscles; ruins posture; increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity; and has been linked to cancer, depression and a shorter life expectancy.

RELATED: Posture Hack: How to Have Better Desk Posture (Video)

It is most likely right under your ass right now. It’s called a chair. How’s your posture right now?

Want to blow your own mind? Take a random day in your workweek and time yourself. How many hours did you spend sitting? Include your relaxation time at home. Now, before you decide to run out and be that treadmill-desk person, try a little management of the problem instead.

Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day. Walk down to your coworker’s office instead of shooting an email. Cut your TV time down by a third. Have a team meeting with everyone standing or go for a walk and talk.

“Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day.” 

Your legs are the big movers. The contractions of these muscles increase fuel consumption and will mediate the collection of high levels of blood sugar in the bloodstream due to inactivity. This is a good thing. Move your big movers.

4. You Have Yet to Grasp Situational Awareness

Remember in college when you were so busy? What’s your reaction now when a twenty-something tells you how busy he or she is? Exactly.

There are many factors in your life that did not exist before now: children, bills, unexpected bills due to children, a job with increased responsibility and leadership roles, more stress, more relationships to manage, more creative and innovative opportunities, more responsibilities at home, more decisions to make each day and less time to make them, more stress, less sleep, and fewer hours in the day to be selfish.

This all must be accounted for in your training. Your training log should include a record of your stress level, how much sleep you got, and if you stayed on track with your diet. It doesn’t have to be a complicated log. Record them all on a scale of 0 to 3. Zero is horrible. Three is excellent.

RELATED: How to Create Perfect Training Sessions and the Perfect Program

The truth is there are no bad days training if you just accept that sometimes life is going to get in your way. Do what you can with what you have where you are.

Only have time for a quick warm up and 3 x 5 on the back squat today? Own it. Only have thirty minutes for your run? Do a light five-minute warm up and four sets of hard running for three minutes, rest for three minutes.

5. What and Who You Compare Yourself to Is All Wrong

It is dangerous when you compare your numbers and your look to the professionals who do it for a living or the person next to you in the gym who is ten to twenty years younger. These people do not have the same life as you. They don’t have the same responsibilities, complications, or genetic traits as you. You are not comparing apples to apples. You are being a juvenile idiot.

By all means, have goals, but respect that you’re not “who you were back then.” You’re not even who you were yesterday. You are you, right now, and the only person you should compare yourself to is you. Period.

RELATED: What Is Effective Training for Older Adults? 

Have Fun With Your Fitness

You must acknowledge that immediate gratification plays no role in your evolution, so enjoy the pursuit of a disciplined practice in the art of fitness. Have fun! Eliminate pressure. If you do this, you will learn that fitness can offer a lot more than just aesthetics and statistics.

And it will be these lessons that ensure your life will be full of grace, beauty, comedy, wisdom, and enlightenment. Avoid all five of these mistakes and you can get to the good stuff much more quickly.

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

The post The 5 Training Mistakes You Need to Avoid After 35 appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You just hit [insert age here]. You don’t see yourself as over the hill, but you’re not exactly a teenager anymore, either. You’ve been an athlete, or active in some way for the majority of your life, and you’ve had your fair share of injuries to boot. Even though you still try to do the same things you did as a younger buck, such as going to the gym and wasting yourself with multiple squats and bench sets to failure, or doing multiple ten-plus mile runs in a week without any recovery days, your body doesn’t seem to heal the way it used to.

Your joints ache, your muscles are tighter, and the occasional injury comes up, where previously there were none. And the thought starts to creep in your mind, “It’s not that I can’t, but should I?”

Nineteen Going on Eighty

Chances are this might describe some of you out there. “Some” probably being an understatement. I get it. I’m only 25, going on 26. But seven years ago, I was nineteen going on eighty (my apologies to my eighty-year-old clients out there, who may be reading this.). At least, that’s how my body felt every day when I got out of bed.

As a college freshman track athlete, I tore my hamstring so badly I required an MRI to see if it was still there. It was “hanging on by few threads,” as the doctor put it. After that injury, my hips began to feel stiff. My lower back became tight to the point I couldn’t bend over and reach much past my knees. I developed numbness in my left thigh, calf, and foot after sitting for more than five minutes. Teammates I would beat by half a second in a 100-meter dash began to beat me by a full second. Everything hurt, and physical activity, especially sprinting, went from a love of mine to something I feared.

Two years after that initial hamstring injury, a parasitic thought crept into my brain and assumed control. “It’s not that I can’t, but should I?” My parents, coaches, friends, and teammates all wondered what was wrong with me. “You’re too young to hurt so much,” was the unanimous response I got when I announced I was quitting track and field at the ripe age of 21. I just wasn’t sure it was worth trying to stay competitive if it was making my body feel that crappy.

When We Make Performance Mean Too Much

Coming to terms with myself, my ego and my competitive nature was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it taught me a valuable lesson: that as we “age” our self-worth should not and, for sanity’s sake, cannot be aligned with physical performance. Aging will be extremely difficult for any person who values him- or herself only for what he or she can do, versus who he or she is as a person.

John, my college track coach, helped me to learn the above lesson. For years I’d only valued myself based on what I could do as a sprinter, and his wisdom couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d quit before the annual Spring Fling spring break track trip, where the team traveled to southern California to compete in a few meets and get away from the cold March Oregon weather. Three days before our departure, I told him that I didn’t want to burden him or my teammates with a subpar competitor. I wasn’t as fast as I was prior to my injury, so what was the point?

Instead of agreeing, John said some of the most profound words I’ve ever heard: “Did you ever stop to think that your value to me, this team, and to yourself is more than just your finishing time?” I left in tears.

A few hours later I got a phone call from John. He said, “You know, you should still come on the trip, even if you aren’t going to compete.” He never lost faith in me, and a week later I was competing again. One year later, in the spring of 2010, after some solid off-season training, I got a personal best in the 400-meter dash and secured myself a spot in the conference championship meet with a time of 50.78s (my previous best was a 53.1 from the year before).

The Blessing of Injury and Aging

By the time I achieved that record time, my outlook on the sport, and physical activity in general had shifted. I no longer cared about my times. I did it because I could. My God-given ability to run was a gift, and I wanted to use it to acknowledge that and give thanks. I still knew I could get hurt again at any moment – indeed, my hamstring and hips still hurt occasionally – but where previously there had been fear, there was a sense of peace. I knew that the finishing time didn’t matter as much as the fact that I finished. As someone who used to value the number alone, this was a revelation.

I have been incredibly blessed by my injuries because I had my performance stripped from me in one fell swoop. I didn’t have the disadvantage of a slow decline. It was a wake-up call that forced me to change quickly. This means that, at 26, I have a unique perspective for someone my age, but it’s a perspective that allows me to understand when it comes to working with clients who are coming to terms with their aging bodies.

So to you other “aging” athletes out there – just because you aren’t as strong, as fast, as flexible, or as agile as you used to be, doesn’t mean you should stop doing things. Come to terms with it. Embrace it, even. Free your mind of the shackles of your self worth, and find worth in other things, such as your faith, your family, or in serving others.

Stay active, find new hobbies, and continue to train in your old ones. Stay secure in the knowledge that even though absolute performance may decline with advanced years, the enjoyment of the process of training is something that never needs to go away.

The post Coming to Terms With Being an Aging Athlete appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Normal Progression

When we first walk into the gym we are weak and stiff, in most people’s cases. In some cases people are weak and hypermobile, but honestly these people are becoming more rare these days. The overriding problems people have are lack of mobility and strength.

So we begin training them, addressing these issues with things like the FMS or Primal Move as well as a systematic strength plan. This strength plan will hopefully go from slow and controlled movements with minimal load to movements with load, and then finally into speed and power work. An example of this could be to teach the hip hinge pattern and then progress to a light deadlift. As the client progresses this becomes a heavier deadlift and then, maybe, at some point we add in exercises like the power clean.

The point is that we’d have this general formula for progression that starts slow and unloaded and builds up to slow and loaded before moving to fast, heavy, and explosive. Never the other way around because beginners will simply have too much to think about if we give them fast, heavy, and explosive while trying to get them to learn a new pattern. That’s poor coaching, and an injury waiting to happen.

The Other End of the Progression

But what if we’re at the other end of the spectrum? What if we’re someone who has been around training for a long period of time and can do most lifts with decent skill, but we find that some of these lifts no longer agree with us? Ask trainees over forty how their body feels after a big squat or deadlift session, or even after a two-hour run, and they’ll likely not have much to say other than those things make them stiff and sore.

And where does our explosive work fit into all this? If slow and controlled is making us feel stiff and sore, what’s going to happen when we try to go faster? As much as those of us in the second half of our lives try to fool ourselves, we need to admit that things just aren’t like they used to be. My forty-two year old body is in pretty good condition – like a 1970s race car that is kept under wraps in the garage and only hauled out to do some fast laps every now and then – but run my vintage engine too long and too hard and I’ll be looking for spare parts. The only difference is that instead of heading to swap meets to try to find parts I’ll be booking in to see a surgeon.

The last two years has been a journey of self-discovery. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the programming department. The problem when you’re making these mistakes with yourself is that the only real warning sign is the sudden twinge of injury because you lack objectivity. And the problem with getting older is that you take longer to recover from these injuries, and the problem with that is that it then takes you even longer to get back on track with your training. A week off due to injury could be four weeks more until you’re back to where you were at the onset of the injury. And the problem with having a lower capacity is that you never remember how hard it was to get to where you were, only what it felt like to be at that level of fitness. So you start pushing hard again and the cycle starts all over again.

The Solution

The real issue, to me, of getting older and being athletic, is that in your head you don’t feel old at all. Until the next day, when you realize the workout you did the day before is what is suddenly causing you to walk like an old man, not the paragon of fitness you clearly are. And so I started looking for ways to get the same effect from training, but without some of the risk involved in the fast and explosive exercises – because that was what was usually hurting me.

My program now centers on a few concepts – mobility, stability, strength, and fitness. The overall goal is to be strong and healthy in the second half of my life and avoid another round of surgery.

Mobility

I’ve deliberately done two things to make sure my mobility stays at least at the level it currently is, or improves. The first is a whole day of training where the only goal is mobility and flexibility. For me, this logically comes on Monday to set up my whole week well. It is also a great active recovery day after long sessions over the weekend.

It’s split this work into two parts, with the first part being about forty minutes of Primal Move and get ups. This could just as easily be a yoga class or an hour of stretching but the point is the same – spend time on your mobility because you’ll want to keep as much range as possible as you get older. It’ll also help your muscles retain elasticity, which is essential for when you do decide to do some fast and explosive work.

Stability

I look at stability training differently than most do. I couldn’t care less what your BOSU single-leg squat cable kickback 1RM is. But I do care that you can stand on one leg and display good core, hip, and shoulder stability.

To that end I favor a few exercises that really work. The first is single leg deadlifts. Every time I train I do a variation of these. If it’s my mobility day then I do them unloaded and walking forwards and backwards. On my other days I do them with varying loads from sets of three up to sets of ten, but I do them daily. Shoulder and hip stability are vital too and this is where get ups, overhead holds, push ups holds, and lunges all come in. The final piece of the stability puzzle is core work and I mix this up with a variety of static holds like planks, hollow holds, and lever variations, as well as FMS based chops. But again, I do some kind of stability work in every single session.

Strength

There comes a point where you just realize that some lifts just don’t feel good anymore. Your shoulders might be a bit tight to snatch with a bar, or maybe your wrist hurts from that time ten years ago when you broke it doing BJJ. Whatever the case, it’s important that you make training fit your body as you age and not try to jam your body into a training plan that your ego says you should be doing.

For me, I still do quick lifts, but now I do them predominantly with kettlebells, or if I work with a bar then I do the power versions either from the hang or off blocks. As far as I am concerned I can get nearly all the benefits I need from deadlifts and kettlebell ballistics, but without the high risk of injury.

I don’t do much heavy pressing these days either. I’ve got a bit of an issue with heavy pressing anyway, given that roughly a third of the planet has an AC joint that isn’t set up well for pressing. I’ve found that if I do wish to press then I am better off using a hard bodyweight variation like handstand push ups or one-arm push ups instead of loaded pressing.

One of the other big things I’m starting to realize is that the low rep schemes – like twos and threes – aren’t so easy for me to handle anymore. It’s been a long time since I did a lot of reps above five, but more and more I find that those are the rep ranges that really allow me to work hard and keep my joints moving well.

Fitness

I have never been an advocate of high intensity cardio training. My issues with it are far too many to name in this article, but let’s just say that as you get older you only have so many hard sessions per week you can do. It’s your choice if you want to use the one or two genuine hard efforts in you for the week on a conditioning session or a strength session. I would advise that unless you have competitive aspirations, you’d be far better off saving your hard efforts to lift more weight than you will on dropping five seconds off your 2000m-row time.

The best choice for fitness that builds your health is “easy” aerobic work. If you don’t know about the 180 minus your age rule for determining your aerobic zone you should. Strap a heart rate monitor on and don’t let it go above that. You’ll find more and more that when you build up the quantity of “easy” fitness sessions you may actually be able to fit in another hard session per week. But the best part about aerobic work is that the recovery cost is nearly zero. Once your heart rate returns to normal, unless it’s a new activity, you’ll be ready to go again for the next session.

I ask myself one question before every session, “Is this going to make me fitter and healthier?” If it only makes me fitter then I need to rethink my plan for the day. The goal in the second half of life should be to move well and with strength so that you can spend the second half of your life enjoying it, not recovering from surgery or illness caused by overeager training.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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