One of our members wrote in with an important point this week. She is 77 and trains twice each week, and wanted to know why the exercise advice petered out for the >60s. She felt ladies >60 may feel it isn’t relevant or important to them. Receiving feedback like this is great for many reasons.
It’s pretty inspirational to hear from someone weight training so regularly at 77 (although I really wish this for more the norm!). Speaking of inspirational, I played golf last week with a man who was 80, who swung a club like a man in his 50s, no exaggeration. His flexibility and strength was really impressive.
I want to be as good as these people if I’m lucky enough to get to that age, and the way I’m going to do it is practicing what I preach – nutrition, weight training, cardiovascular exercise, meditation, stretching, good relationships, sleep (see my previous posts on longevity!)
Ladies >60. My advice in recent posts for women and exercise is linked in large part to hormones, with recommendations changing as a woman ages. The major changes in hormone levels, particularly oestrogen and progesterone, occur before this age, although can still change in later years. This is why I have split the advice based on age in previous posts. I would therefore suggest however that advice doesn’t necessarily need to change for any post-menopausal woman irrespective of age – for example I would treat an 80 year old as a 65 year old. In fact, there have been studies of women (and men!) in their 90s showing increases in strength, body composition, balance, co-ordination, with as little as 12 weeks of training! In fact, it’s arguably even more important for all people of this age to strength train, as falls risk is a huge issue – 1 in 3 adults >65 and 1 in 2 over 80 will have a fall each year. If a hip gets broken, one third are dead at one year. Horrible statistics.
It’s never too late to get started with strength training.
As I’ve said before, something I hear a lot from my patients is that they like the more cardio-type work – the walking / swimming / cycling and feel more comfortable doing that then weights type work. Without generalising too much, I think this is particularly true for women, many of whom in part do this kind of exercise partly for body composition reasons (ie to try and achieve / maintain a healthy body weight) and/or to aim to live longer. The sticky issue is, that this kind of moderate intensity exercise drives up cortisol (a stress hormone), but not enough to stimulate something called growth hormone, and testosterone. These two hormones are what is needed to dampen down cortisol. Net result – people may feel exhausted at the end of doing the activity, but it’s not beneficial from a hormone, and therefore physiological perspective.
All very scientific, but what does this mean for the average person, and what can they do about it? The answer is to incorporate some really high intensity exercise into your week, and this will look different for different people. I always come back to this – don’t pick something you don’t like, you are on a losing wicket and it will be an uphill battle to build it into your lifestyle.
What do i mean by high-intensity? Something you can only do for at most 30 seconds. That is not long. If you can do it for longer, it is not truly high-intensity. What would this look like for you? It could be a brisker-than-you-are-used-to pace up a hill whilst walking which you can only sustain for 30 seconds. It could be 350 watts on a turbo-trainer. You do you (safely).
Remember recovery also is super important. I would add here that the ‘easy’ exercise I mention above, the walking/cycling etc – this is great for mental health. I am not saying don’t do it at all, I’m just saying there are much better ways of achieving fitness / longevity goals.
One of my main goals is to avoid dementia, as my mum has it and it is a ghastly condition. I’ve done whole sections on dementia and its prevention, so please do read them if you’ve not, but just to point out here that strength training is great for stimulating the central nervous system, improving connections between neurons, and reducing dementia risk. Pause for a moment and consider what your personal incentive or motivation might be to change your exercise habits?
My last piece of advice for today is to think of variety. I would get bored doing the same old exercises each week ad infinitum. I try and work on around a 6 week cycle, changing things up to keep it fresh. For example, I’m starting now to look forward to going skiing this winter, so lower body exercises will take priority in the strength department, and I’ll get some longer endurance type indoor bike rides to build my stamina for long days on the mountain.