Fit Over 40. What doesn’t work terribly well, and what works much better.
As we age, things change. “Duh” you may be saying. But allow me to explain how it changes for you and your body, as most people recognize and acknowledge that things do indeed change, yet their strategies do not change at all.
When we were younger, with less stress, with more sleep, and with faster metabolisms staying “in-shape” seemed to be pretty easy. Do a little cardio, and occasionally pick up some little weights and BOOM! We stayed moderately to mostly in shape.
Fast forward to your 30′s and you probably found that you needed to do a little more exercising just to stay the same OR more often for people, do more exercise and still not see the results they were hoping for.
Once you near and pass 40, the unfortunate truth is that things just become even harder. Most peoples’ strategy is to just do more of the same stuff they always have (or give up 😩) , but unfortunately the stuff they were doing isn’t going to get the job done. Even if you do MORE and MORE, or work HARDER and HARDER, inferior choices are inferior choices and all that is going to happen is you’ll feel tired and beat up.
This is where the cliches SMARTER NOT HARDER, and LESS IS MORE, are absolutely true.
Before we explain how your life and body is different now, what you might be doing that is wasting time and effort, and finally what you can do to improve your results, it’s also important to note that as we age it's likely that our training goals and our 'WHY' will change quite a bit. (We want to be healthy for our kids, we want to not be tired, sore, beat up or injured, we would like to be able to get in and out of our cars without pain, and what never changes is that we still want to feel fit and attractive). If you can identify your important WHY, you will be more likely to stick to your plan and get the results you want.
HOW YOUR LIFE CHANGES AS YOU AGE
Your number of responsibilities increase, and so does your total stress levels. These extra stressors require more energy to recover from, and some exercise will help you cope while too much exercise will hinder your ability to deal with stress.
With more responsibilities and stress most people tend to sleep less, rush their meals more often resulting in less nutrition, and both of these things mean you cannot recover as much as you used to when you could sleep in and eat more food.
You accumulate little (or big) injuries and ouchies over the course of your life, and it makes training intimidating because you don’t know how to train around existing injuries. So you avoid strength training due to fear, and what we see is that as people get older they get weaker and more frail because they have avoided strength training.
You forget or put aside your own exercise routine in order to take care of work, family and other responsibilities.
You physically do not recover from exercise as fast as you used to. Not just because of what is written above, just in general you physically don’t bounce back like you used to.
As we age, we lose muscle mass and strength. The average human has the potential to lose up to .5lbs of muscle mass each year starting at age 25. Muscle mass is a big part of what let’s us eat food and not get fat, generally speaking the more muscle mass you have the more food and diet options you have and can still be lean. Losing strength makes you more likely to get injured, and also less helpful in general because you can’t physically do things in life.
WHAT YOU MAY BE DOING THAT IS WASTING TIME AND EFFORT
This is treadmill running, longer running, spin,
WHY? People believe they should do cardio for the calorie burning effects. Unfortunately this is an ineffective strategy. The way to create a calorie deficit and lose weight is MUCH MORE effective by reducing calories consumed vs trying to burn more.
side note: you are very very likely burning way less calories than you think you are, most calorie estimates are over blown and used as marketing gimmicks. We don’t give calories burned numbers at Fitwall because we have integrity.
WHY? part 2: Long cardio efforts time and time again are shown to increase hunger, making it potentially harder to stick to a diet.
WHY? part 3: it takes the time you have for exercise and has you doing something that doesn’t keep muscle on you. Sure it may help burn a little bit of fat, but the key is keeping your muscle.
Kinda-Sorta-but-not-quite-Strength Training
This is Sculpt classes at yoga studios, most group classes, many bootcamps, classes that combine treadmills with light weights and fast paced circuits, and what people usually do on their own.
WHY? these “high intensity” training centers are really good at one thing: MAKING YOU TIRED. And we tend to attribute feeling tired and beat up with good exercise but that is just patently false and wrong. Tired just empties your physical reserves, and makes it harder and harder to recover. Progress happens during recovery.
at Fitwall we will often hear “I could do more” and that means we are doing it right, because you got an appropriate stimulus that will force your body to adapt and improve, but won’t be so much that you just remain tired and beat up.
WHY? part 2: to get stronger you have to lift heavier weights or perform more challenging exercises over time. Just lifting little weights faster and without rest simply makes you tired, not stronger and certainly not more resilient as it just beats you down.
WHY? part 3: the best cardio effects come from focusing on cardio, and the best strength effects come from focusing on strength. These classes try to do both at the expense of the other. This is called the “interference effect” in exercise. This is why we have strength focused days, and cardio focused days, so that we get max results from each.
This is doing a different type of exercise randomly throughout the week.
WHY? This can work for a while, but it will never be as good as following a plan that is put together to deliver better results. The best athletes and physiques on earth were built on a program designed to deliver results, not left to random chance of “switching it up”. If you have been switching it up constantly it means you have been getting sweaty, but that you haven’t been improving as much or quickly as you could.
WHY? part 2: there is not organization in random exercise, meaning you may do too much of similar things or none of something else because the different options have no idea what each other are doing!
Training hard too frequently.
This is working out hard multiple times per day and/or 7 days per week.
WHY? Simple: you get better by recovering and if you don’t allow your body the ability to recover you will simply feel beat up and tired and unhappy with your lack of progress despite trying very hard.
This is performing harder and heavier exercise over time, which forces your body to get stronger and more resilient. Oh, and it also is the best way to keep or add muscle mass as you age with is the most important thing you can do to remain leaner, healthier, and feel better.
This is moving your body in as many ways and angles as possible. This is not stretching (flexibility is pretty useless without strength in those ranges). Most of the standard group classes stick to the same types of movements done hard and fast, but never challenge your coordination. You should be carefully and as part of a program introducing and learning new physical skills that not only will it keep your body more resilient and mobile, but actually help keep your brain healthy.
This is you putting yourself in the best position to improve your physique and health because you have a cohesive plan. A plan that addresses all the needs you have, and doesn’t overdo any particular part.
Training hard, in an appropriate amount.
This is you focusing your hard efforts on what gives the biggest payout. Then you still train other days as part of the program in order to improve your recovery and results.
Cardio is not bad, some places will try and say that it is useless. Above we said it was a misallocation of time when maximum physical improvements are desired. However, performing easy cardio like bike rides, hikes, fun easy jogs, or playing sports with your friends and family are invaluable to your emotional and therefor physical health and happiness.
Getting older is not a sentence to getting fatter, feeling weaker, and losing your health and feelings of vigor. It just means you need to have a better plan to combat the effects of aging. Fitwall specializes in these things, and that is why we are changing so many lives and physiques.
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