@CT I am curious on your opinion here.
What do you do to play the long game in training over the short term that allows you to keep training?
Unrelated question how will you structure your training to maximize results and balance career and family responsibilities once you have a child?
Good question.
Iām just starting to get there myself (Iām āonlyā 40) but Iāve trained with some really inspiring older lifters.
A pair of olympic lifters were 67 and 69 when I trained with them. At a bodyweight of 77kg one was world champion in his age group, snatching 92.5kg and clean & jerking 125kg. The other one was snatching 80kg and cleaning 100kg for sets of 5.
The later one is now 83 years of age and still competes! At 82 he front squatted 110kg, snatched 67kg and clean & jerked 85kg.
One of my former clients is 67 and still competes in Firefit events. At 64 he was still improving his deadlift PR and he has the cardio of a locomotive!
I also trained a female (she was 54 at the time, 58 now) and at at body weight of 123lbs she deadlifted 315 and benched 175 (with a pause).But more impressive is that the first time she deadlifted 315 she did 20kg of cross-country skiing in the morning THEN came to the gym!
If I look at those older trainees Iāve been around, even though they all had different training styles, I can see many commonalities.
They never stopped training hard. Yes they had to adjust volume and frequency at one point (but not as much as you might think), and maybe they stopped doing at much 1RM work, but they still kept trying to improve. I hate to be that guyā¦ the guy who says that its all in your head. But a lot of it is. I think that a lot of people ālose itā when they get older not necessarily because aging degrades their body, but rather because their priorities change: training stops bring a priority, they might spend weeks of months without training and when they get back they try to get back to their original level too quickly. Or they think to themselves āIām getting old, I canāt push as hard as I used toā and by not training as hard, you lose your capacities and you slowly become weaker and less muscular because of your lack of efforts, not because the body loses it by itself.
They tend to have either less stress in their life or have a personality that deals really well with stress. Chronic stress can make it a lot harder to build muscle (and easier to lose it as you are getting older), it can lead to lower testosterone levels and increase the risk on injuries (being overly stress tightens up the flexor muscles, making you more likely to get injured).
Their training was not static. If I look at Marcel (the weightlifter who is still competing at 83) when we were training together he would do his olympic lifting workout in the morning then he would do sprints or agility drills in the afternoon. Sometimes he would replace one of these two workouts with bodybuilding work.
I trained Jack (my fireman who is still competing at 67) pretty much like I am training Crossfit athletes now (so I pretty much invented Crossfit 
). We would do one strength lift, then one assistance exercise and then a circuit. The circuit was either heavy (strongman medley) or light (more conditioning than strength) and it would change every workout. He never did the same workout twice. And when I stopped training him he started doing Crossfit.
AndrƩe (the female lifter) did cross-country skiing, cycling, hiking and in the gym we would do phases of bodybuilding, phases of powerlifting and phases of conditioning work (circuits).
Then can look at Dr,Tim Hall (the jacked older dude in some of T-nationās videos and pics) and looked amazing at 55 when I worked with him (must be 60 now). Tim did a lot of bdybuilding work, but also lots of circuit work (battle ropes, prowler, sled pulling, KB, etc.) as well as jogging and sprinting.
Another friend of mine is a former powerlifter who had a 600lbs bench press. He is in his lat 50s now and his workout changes every day. He does have some traditional bodybuilding work 2-3 times a week and does 2-3 circuit sessions. Either strongman sessions (circuits of log press, farmerās walk, tire flip, yokeā¦ not super heavy) or conditioning (prowler pushing, TRX, battle rop,thrusters). The guy is in solid shape. In fact, last year he did 14 hours of prowler to raise 30 000$ for a kid charity. They were 3 guys and did a total of 30kg of prowler (10kg each). This year for the same charity he and his partners did 18 hours of circuit training!
It is my belief that having a lot of movement and demand variety in your training is one of the best ways to minimize the risk of injuries and keep the body functional.
Despite training hard they minimized injuries. Maybe they had a predisposition for not getting injured (having the ACTN3 RR gene decreases the risk of muscle/tendon injuries) or they were better as listening to their body. But they donāt have serious aches and pains. To me it is in part due to training hard but not ātoo hardāā¦ they never missed lifts in training and always used proper form. They were patient with their progression. I also think that the wide range of exercises allowed them to be more balanced, reducing the risk of injuries.
They were lean. The two weightlifters were 77kg (170lbs) on 5ā8" with plenty of veins and decent definition, I would say 10-11% body fat. Dr.Tim Hall was an anatomy chart (we can also mention Tim Patterson, Biotestās CEO who must have negative body fat and could do a front lever on the rings the first time he tried it!), Jack the fireman was the same size as the weightlifers (oddly enough, the EXACT same size) with striated delts and super defined arms and legs. AndrĆ©e was always 4 weeks away from being able to step on a bodybuilding stage. I donāt think itās the low body fat itself that was the key but that the low body fat was a sign that they didnāt overeat (I believe that consuming a large caloric surplus can speed up aging and creates a lot of inflammation) and made good overall food choices.I think that a lot of lifters cut their careers short by trying to get big and strong too fast by chronically overeating. On the flip side, caloric restriction has been shown to be one of the few things that can slow down aging (by decreasing mTOR activation and maybe increasing tolemere length). This is why I personally began fasting twice a week.
They train to keep or improve their physical capacities. And Iām not just talking about lifting strength. They ran, did cross-country skiing, jumped, swam, cycled, sprinted, etc. It is my belief that if you do what is necessary to maintain physical capacities (of course you will lose some of it as you are getting a lot holder) then you will slow down aging.
Iāll let you know in 2 months!
Itās all about priorities!!! I have a five year old daughter and two year old son and my training hasnāt changed one bit. It will later in life when they become more involved in their own things, but currently my daughter likes to work out with me when I train at home in the basement. She loves pull ups! Iāll set my bar in the rack at a height she can reach and we take turns doing exercises. I also give her bands to do rows. She does overhead plate raises with the 2.5ās Weāre working on push ups and sheās already good at squatting (duh, sheās a kid!).
Your training might just be enhanced!
Excellent advice. Does oneās anaerobic and aerobic capacity take a higher precedent the older one gets?
I think that the power of a system (anaerobic power and aerobic power) decrease more or faster than the capacity.
From experience the things that decrease the fastest (more or less in order:
I wonder if there are any health benefits doing more speed work the the older one getsā¦
Provided that the body is well prepared for it, I believe that it would
I recall reading a study that focused on aging and neurological disorders and how focusing on single limb exercises on the non dominant side helped reduce the chance of said disorder because the nervous system gets lazy and accustomed to established motor patterns.
Iāve been wondering if your neural workouts and making people adopt a more explosive profile might have a similar effect considering explosiveness diminishes with age.
Fantastic post, Coach!
From a purely aesthetical viewpoint for older lifters, do you think some form of conditioning should be a mandatory aspect of any training programme? Or would a pure ābodybuildingā programme, coupled with diet, suffice?
The reason I ask is that I am now plus 40 and love training high frequency using the BDW principles. I still have aspirations of adding a bit more LBM and using diet to get jacked. However, part of me thinks I am missing out on other aspects of physical fitness. For example, I followed your Athlete Lean Athlete Strong for a while and, while I felt a huge difference in conditioning, I didnāt feel aesthetically as in good shape as I am now - where I train 6 days a week and anything else is NEPA (walking to work, etc). Any input appreciated.
It is my belief that it will be beneficial. I think that having an efficient cardiovascular system allows you to have a greater muscle-building potential. If your heart and vascular system are not in good condition the body will not allow you to add a lot more tissue, which it might not be able to support. Of course lifters using drugs can bypass that.
Thanks Coach. On that basis, is it worth building up the conditioning element on BDW (carries, etc) or worth considering inserting 1-2 specialist conditioning days and eliminating 2 days of BDW. For example:
Day 1 - BDW day 1
Day 2 - BDW day 2
Day 3 - circuits
Day 4 - BDW day 3
Day 5 - circuits
Day 6 - BDW day 4
Day 7 - off
The option with 2 circuit days would be better. One day would be more conditioning based (lighter, longer durationā¦ stuff like thrusters, rowing, KB swings, prowler, etc.) and the other day a bit heavier OR doing sprints.
As always, many thanks. I will try that out.
@CT I have been trying to include a lot more rotator cuff work, trap 3 and rear delt work because I have ignored it for far too long and I want to bench forever.
Are cables a better choice over free weights for these muscles (ie to keep constant tension)?
Bands, cables, DBs can all be used and will emphasize different points in the strength curve. I feel that a mix of all 3 is your best bet
Great topic and insights by CT. Iāve been increasingly thinking about this topic given that I am now closer to 40 than 30.
From the get go, I can this: donāt believe the people that tell you that you will inevitably get fat and ālose itā. This is BS. I recall quite well, when I was about 19-20, in my first days at a gym, two older men (in their thirties) that told me this: āYouāll see young man, when you hit 30, you get a gut and everything goes downhill from thereā. Back then, I thought there was something fateful with our genes that made it so that once you hit 30, BAM, fat/loss of fitness ensues. Well, it turns out that at 35 I am in the best shape of my life and never looked better. We just finished benchmark week at my crossfit gym and I annihilated my numbers from 3-4 years ago when I had last done crossfit. This certainly keeps me enthusiastic for aging well and getting stronger. Also, my father (almost 70), who cycles about 100 km per day, is also a source of inspiration/example of staying fit when aging.
Granted, I donāt have kids (yet), but as health and training is in my top three life priorities, there is no way I will just stop training as soon as I have kids. Aināt gonna happen. I might train less, but not drop it completely.
One of my main takeaways from CTās intervention is that one should aim to be a well-rounded athlete and work on all facets of fitness (endurance, strength, etc.) and to vary oneās training throughout the years while always maintaining (or improving) a solid foundational fitness.
This kind of reminds me of CTās articles āThe four seasons of trainingā ā focusing on different types of training throughout the year. The approach really appealed to me upon first read, not only because I need to vary my training (Type 2 here), but it allows one to cover all bases. For the last two years, Iāve been more or less cycling through strength, gymnastics and ācrossfitā training, and Iāve had a blast and noticed many improvements. I maintain a solid cardio foundation my bike commutes to work/the gym and long walks.
^Four seasons is the business!
Well, it is based on the training of my friend who is 55+ and looks the same that he did when he was 32.
One thing im relearning is the value of high rep back squats. CTās high frequency bodybuilding had 4 x 8 @65% and you just pour out sweat. A friend asked to go for 3 mile run. I havent done any conditioning and kept up no problem. Stan Efferding says high rep back squats will change your life and hes not wrong.