The other morning I was doing my squat workout when an older fella remarked on how fast I made the rep look.
My squatting these days is built around max singles, which are really warm-ups for the back-off sets which are where the real work happens. It’s the Squat Every Day method, just without the “every day” part.
Since I rarely ever take a rep that is even remotely in question, my top sets are pretty uninspiring to me these days even though I’m hitting three plates and more.
My goal is to smoke the weight and make the plates rattle at the top, even when it’s getting into heavy.
If strength sports hadn’t been my jam since Bill Clinton was president I’d be doing more conventional bodybuilder training for leg aesthetics. There’s just something about squats and deadlifts that I can’t quit.
Anyhow, the conversation quickly took the turn I expected:
“You know you get a little older and you can’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
Inside, I sighed.
Here we go.
I smiled and nodded.
“Yeah. I’m getting to my late 40s and I’ve been hearing that for close to 30 years. I guess it’ll happen one day,” I said.
“You get older and you start getting hurt,” he said.
I thought back to the partial tears in both rotator cuffs from bench pressing like an idiot. The blown-out muscle in my inner left thigh and the tear in my tear drop in the right leg, which both happened under inadvisably heavy squats. The various aches and pains and nags that just happen with consistent strength training.
All of that happened before I turned 30.
Nearly all of those pains are gone because how I train and recover now.
“Man the getting-hurt was already happening twenty years ago,” I said with a smile.
I’m not opposed to small talk, but I swear to you I have been getting this Boomer lecture on how aging is going to destroy you and lifting is just going to get you hurt since the day I began lifting weights.
It’s like every man in the gym over 50 was given the same script to read off.
They honestly believe that not only is decline unavoidable, but lifting weights — the best medicine there is for longevity — is going to make it worse.
It was halfway believable when I was 21 and listening to guys who had 20+ years on me. Now that I am becoming that “older guy at the gym” I see things differently.
The old-guy mope-lecture doesn’t quite land the same on a guy pushing 50 who refuses to read the script.
I have two thoughts whenever this conversation happens:
1) Even if it’s true that age is going to get you eventually, get lost with that downer talk. I don’t want to hear the moping. Nothing is gained from it, except whatever pride and vanity is tickled by being a victim.
2) The first thing isn’t true. There’s a picture of an MRI scan from a study that I always talk about which compares the thigh cross-section of a 40-year old triathlete, a 70-year old triathlete, and a 70-something sedentary man.
The 70-year old triathlete looks near indistinguishable to his 40 year old counterpart. They’re both all muscle with only a hint of flab around the edges.
The sedentary guy has thighs that look like the fattiest cut of streaked bacon. Almost no meat and a lot of flab.
These aren’t results that “just happened”. They’re products of choices and behaviors.
Intentional effort to stay in shape keeps you in shape.
You have to change things, of course you do. I don’t train now the way I did 20 years ago. Life is different, priorities change, and an older body does have different needs. I’ve modified a lot of things, for example, to spend more time on energy/metabolic training, to train with joints in mind, to focus more on power than brute strength, training with an eye to body composition, and so on.
This sounds harsh to say, but the mopers and lecturers often don’t know how to train (and eat, and recover) to maintain and thrive in spite of age.
They go through the motions and see little results and conclude “this doesn’t work”.
That’s a familiar pattern across the board, sad as it is to see.
People let themselves get devoured by their own assumptions and never once think to question them.
The principle Use It Or Lose It does not have an expiry date. You don’t suddenly wake up one day weak, hurt, and inflexible. That took years to accumulate.
I’m not content with that.
And if you aren’t content with that…
I work with clients over 40 to stop beating yourself up (in the gym and out), cut out all the extra junk in your eating and exercise that keeps you stalled, and fix you up good so you can get that flab off, feel better, and look better.
If you’re interested in working with me to see real results for once, and you’re actually committed to doing it, you’ll need to be on my email list for access to spaces.
Matt Perryman