Of course I’m kidding, because
if you’re training you’re not really elderly, in the sense that the
government uses the term for Medicare Recipients and people on 13
prescriptions. Training keeps this from happening. But it must be
said that 70-year-old people cannot approach their training the same
way they did when they were 20. The accumulated effects of 70 years
on the planet – even if you’ve been training – must be taken into
consideration if you are to benefit from the effort and the work.
Your program must be different. Not easier – just different.
Very
few 70-year-old trainees are operating with Original Equipment,
because life degrades everybody to varying degrees. Most of us have
had accidents or disease processes that have “compromised” our
abilities under the bar, and even if we’ve been perfectly safe, 70 is
not
20.
As
you age, the quality of your connective tissues degrades as their
protein composition alters, and they become less elastic and more
prone to rupture injuries. You become less efficient at absorbing and
utilizing digestive protein. You hormonal profile becomes less
“robust.” Your sleep quality degrades, and you generally sleep
less for various reasons (more pointless things to worry about).
Stupid little injuries accumulate and affect your overall physical
ability. Muscular soreness more profoundly impacts your motivation,
and further detracts from your sleep. All of this shit adversely
affects your training.
The
things about age that positively affect your training are the
improvements in your judgement and the experience that you have
accumulated. You know when to push through and when to wait, when to
go for the PR and when to repeat a weight, when to alter a different
training variable. You may need to make a major programming
adjustment, and when you’re 65 it won’t be because you read about a
new program on a bodybuilding website.
As
a result of all these things, training must be approached differently
as you age. By that I mean “become older” as in over 55. To not
belabor the point, “older” can happen to different people at
different ages, and in general is postponed by training under the
bar. But if you just started training and you’re 65, it is safe to
say that you will follow a different program than a younger trainee
at the beginning of the program.
We
start younger novices with an aggressive loading progression, because
they can recover from it and adapt, and if they can, they should. A
20-year-old kid can put 350 pounds on his squat, 150 pounds on his
bench, 400 pounds on his deadlift, and 100 pounds on his press in a
year and a half, and gain 50 pounds of useful, non-greasy bodyweight,
which amounts to a profound
physical transformation. An old guy cannot do this, and the attempt
will get him hurt.
The
kid squats 3 times a week, and the old guy squats twice a week. Both
of them add weight each time they train, but the old guy uses smaller
jumps. The kid – after a few weeks – alternates deadlifts with
power cleans as the pulling exercises, while the old guy doesn’t
power clean (see the previous connective tissue discussion). The kid
drives his deadlift up as fast as it will go, while the old guy takes
his time while making sure he is increasing his loads at least every
other workout, using a light deadlift day instead of the cleans.
Upper
body jumps for the kid might be 5 pounds on the bench and 2.5 for the
press, while the old guy might go up 2 or 2.5 on the bench and 1 to
1.5 on the press. Chins are the only real “assistance” exercise
in the program, and the kid starts of with 3 sets to failure with 5
minutes between sets. The old guy might have to start with a lat
machine and work up to bodyweight.
The
most important thing is to remember the basic principles of training:
stress, recovery, and adaptation.
This is the basis of the method, and it applies to everybody.
Strength
is the ability to produce force against an external resistance –
the load. Stress is the effect produced by moving a load to which the
body is not adapted. Our method uses loads applied to the body during
normal human movement patterns, like squatting down and up, picking
something up off of the floor, pushing something overhead, pushing
something away from you, pulling something toward you, and throwing
something up and catching it. The barbell is the best tool we have
for applying force to the body against the way it naturally produces
force. The load on the bar is used to incrementally increase the
amount of force you have to produce to execute the movement pattern.
The
exact amount of loading and the exact movement pattern varies with
the individual, based on specific ability and limitations. An
experienced coach starts with the generally applicable programming
for the demographic of the individual and then modifies it to adapt
to the specific circumstances, but always working toward optimizing
the movement for the production of force. A 20-year-old guy can
usually perform force production tasks better than a 70-year-old guy,
so that is the initial assumption until proven otherwise. The coach’s
judgement must be formed by experience with a wide range of
demographics, so that the best approach can be synthesized out of all
the available options.
The
old guy and the kid both squat, press, deadlift, and bench press. The
kid will power clean, while the old guy will use a light deadlift
day. Both will do their version of chins, either on the bar or the
lat machine. An injury history might alter the details, but the
process is essentially the same: judiciously locate the limits of
your ability on the primary barbell exercises, and then extend those
limits incrementally. And I can’t tell you exactly
what to do – you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.
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