How to stay strong as you age | Strength Training for Older Adults

Описание: #strengthtrainingforolderadults #oldnotweak

Need to be working hard (relative to you) 2-3x per week
-Nustep example

The more INTENSE you feel the exercise is, the more benefit you are likely to get.

Ways to measure intensity:
1. Easy/ Medium / Hard: want to be at least medium
2. Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) 1-10 scale: want to be 4-5/10 or higher

3. Heart rate: 220-age= max heart rate
-want to work at 40-60% of max heart rate if new to exercise
-60-80% is better as you become accustomed to exercise

Ways to adjust intensity:
1. Increase resistance or difficulty
-sit to stand examples
-deadlift examples
2. Decrease rest between sets
-start with work to rest ratio of 1/1-3
-gradually decrease rest
3. Perform exercise circuit
-combine 2 or more exercises working different muscle groups so you are working a different muscle group while another is “resting”
ex: squats, push up, row, side bridge

Reps and Sets:
1. For the average person, the exact number of reps and sets of an exercise doesn’t matter as much as long as the last 1-2 reps are pretty hard.
2. 3 sets of 10 is a common prescription for an exercise which will work just fine for most people (as long as the resistance/difficulty is such that it is hard to complete the last 1-2 reps, should feel like you couldn’t complete an 11th rep with good form)
3. If you can complete the last 1-2 reps with good form and feeling like you could still complete another rep, this is a sign you need to increase the resistance
4. For this reason I will often have people do sets of 12 because they will automatically try to do 2 “extra” reps when I am really trying to see where their 10 rep limit is.
5. In general sets of 5ish reps are more for power, 10-12ish reps are more for strength and 15-20ish reps are more for endurance. Also, in general, you would do more sets if you are doing less reps such as 5 sets of 5 reps and less sets when you are doing more reps such as 2 sets of 12 reps. You can get super detailed and into the weeds on this and there are tons of programs you can find online. The common theme is that the last rep should feel hard and you should feel like you cannot complete another rep with good form.

Soreness:
1. Normal to have muscle soreness for a day or two after. A sign that you worked at a level to make your muscles get stronger.
2. Joint pain is a sign your tissue was not ready for that level or type of exercise. It is important to find exercises that are tolerable. Joint pain is not an excuse not to exercise at all.

The principles strength and fitness are the same for an olympic athlete as they are for an older woman who just wants to have the strength to continue gardening.

Do relatively hard things on a consistent basis and you will see progress.

Nick Rech, DPT
www.rech.physio
[email protected]