11/04/2023
Well done Telegraph for running this article. If you don’t want to be falling over or tottering about when you get old, not able to walk up an incline without pain or up stairs, or you want your later years to be able bodied and happy, keeping your muscles strong is non negotiable. It is also linked to better brain health and low inflammation. Frailty is not a natural outcome, but it is if we don’t captain our own ship and work for strength. Home workouts are as good as the gym. Get strong stay vital 💪
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/benefits-weight-training-older-men-seniors/?WT.mc_id=e_DM132714&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Hea_New&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_Hea_New20230411&utm_campaign=DM132714
‘Strength is cool. However sophisticated we are, the moment we’re passed a jar of jam and asked to unscrew a reluctant lid, we give our all to be the kitchen hero. Strength is also vital to our health and well-being, strangely fascinating and thrillingly accessible to people of all ages.
Strength coach Sally Moss says: “If you start late, let’s say, in your 50s and 60s, it’s possible to become stronger than you were in your 30s. Whatever your age, if you come in new to lifting you will become stronger.” Moss, owner of weightlifting company Strength Ambassadors, is 48 years old and bench presses an impressive 70kg.
The Instagram hashtag Old Man Strength has 132,000 posts and here you will find senior gentlemen hefting barbells bending under their huge weights. The nearest equivalent for women is (9.3 million posts). Both are a form of protest against the stereotypes “old and frail” and “always on a diet”.
There is a quiet revolution in strength training as the importance of muscle mass as we age is only just coming to light. Muscle helps with insulin sensitivity, cognitive power, cardiovascular health and bone density and may stop you from becoming an old person who falls and injures themselves.
There is a 'quiet revolution' in strength training due to a wider understanding of the importance of muscle mass as we age
There is a 'quiet revolution' in strength training due to a wider understanding of the importance of muscle mass as we age CREDIT: Getty
But the corner of the gym where people “train heavy” (the jargon is very seductive) can seem intimidating.
Most strength training involves weights sufficiently heavy you’re only able to pick them up between one and five times in each set. Competing strength athletes look very different to bodybuilders or track and field specialists, and this reflects an entirely separate objective and approach.
Dan Thomas is a competing strongman. At 45 he will be deadlifting 300kg merely to enter his next European competition. Thomas, a coach at London’s Commando Temple gym, is evangelical about the benefits of “lifting heavy”, which, he says, has helped him overcome mental health challenges.
“I had a period in my life when drinking was all-consuming, but strength training has replaced the things that were causing me trouble. When I’m lifting, I’m not worrying about bills or work, I’m not worrying about anything, it’s just me and the weights.”
Thomas says he sees busy, older clients who enter the gym unable to climb the stairs without becoming breathless and once they are able to make a heavy lift, they feel a real sense of satisfaction.
What stops most of us over a certain age from tackling heavy lifts is fear. As a 59-year-old I have felt the nauseating “ping” of some hitherto uninteresting muscle in my lower back as I attempted to move a sofa or shuffle a fridge. Things that are as heavy or heavier than we are can damage us when we lift them. Piano-shifting is not a staple of visual comedy for nothing.
Thomas says the first step in strength is to find a good coach. Joe Wicks-style online video tips will not be able to see your poor stance or dangerous back position. You wouldn’t buy a car, watch a YouTube instructional video and head out on the road.
Filled with a mix of excitement and uncertainty I visited the Farringdon branch of Gymbox for some coaching in heavy lifting. There I told personal trainer Eoin Ryan about my history of poor lifting, injuries and reluctance to pick up anything that feels like it might change the way I walk.
Ryan is one of those trainers who inspires instant confidence. After a series of warm-ups, we finally turn to the deadlift – an exercise I never usually attempt despite being a regular gym man.
In a sense, it is the most straightforward exercise. You literally bend forward, grasp the bar, lift it off the ground and put it back. A movement we all perform every day retrieving toys, pencils and stray sandwich fillings (or is that just me?).
However, imagine that a pencil suddenly weighs as much as you do, the whole game changes. What I found once I was challenged by a heavy weight was every detail of posture and breathing made an enormous difference.
I’m now someone who officially “lifts heavy”, and the sense of accomplishment of moving something momentous is too addictive not to revisit. Bring me your jam jars…’
With the importance of amassing muscle in later life only just coming to light, here’s why it’s never too late to start weight training
