Weight Lifting

[45dotACP]

My considerations in this regard are biased by what I do. I am a doc who sees a lot of older, old, and frankly very old folks with at least heart diseases, and often times more than heart disease. Within this group, I have a quite large cohort of people who are in their mid or late 80s or early 90s and who simply kick ass. These are the people who are/were in such a good shape that when their heart attacks happened, valves failed and electricity stopped running we went a full court press (try that in socialized medicine) and they not only survived, they regained a complete and normal function. In other words, these are the people who never lost their physical dignity to age and disease, who remain able bodied and enjoy their life literally until they drop dead. When I see a patient like that, I always ask what they did for themselves lifestyle and fitness wise that kept them so strong for decades.

Most never smoked; those who did quit early in life. Almost no one followed any specific diet but none of them is overweight; most are normal weight or just slightly above. Nobody worked nights, sucks for me. Every single one maintained a high aerobic capacity, either because of physical work or aerobic exercises. This became a way of life for them, nearly daily aerobic efforts. This implies that almost all of them managed to preserve their joints. Not a single one was a weightlifter but almost every man did some strength training or work to maintain a healthy muscle mass.

What I do for myself is an emulation of these remarkable folks. I try to go gym 7 days a week. "Try" is a key word. Sometimes it is 7, and sometimes it is none, but I'd imagine the average is 5. I try to alternate lifting and cardio, shooting for 120-150 minutes of aerobic exercise weekly. After all, my own professional society recommends 150 a week. I try to preferentially do non-impact cardio (swimming) over impact (running) for joint health. When I do cardio, I don't care about distance or speed, I care about uninterrupted time spent in my target heart rate range.
When I lift, the last thing I am interested is muscle mass gain. I want muscle mass preservation, muscle strength, joint safety and range of motion.

I agree on creatine. I do use a bunch of protein but that's pretty much muscle mass preservation at my age. I try hard to cut crappy food out of my diet. I don't claim much science behind my approach, it is just an observational data.

Solid post. I work as a RN for a pretty similar patient population. All of them have heart disease, given that my floor deals with transplants, open heart surgeries and VADs, but the comorbid stuff is nasty. End stage kidney failure, uncontrolled diabetes....some of my patients say living til you're 100 is overrated. I bite my tongue every time before I point out that being unhealthy enough to die of heart disease at 55 is a hard way to check out.

That sucks for me about the night shift thing too. Would it be safe to assume not a lot of them worked in healthcare? 😄

[idahojess]

YVK's post reminds me of Bill Iffrig. Solid old athlete (my dad actually knew him from the local Y, back in the day). I think he did physical labor, in addition to being an amazing runner. Guy's got some pretty strong muscles for being 78-79.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article...-video-journey

[Eyesquared]

I have recently read Tactical Barbell and Tactical Barbell II and was pretty much blown away by them. The first book is how a multidisciplinary athlete can get strong and maintain or improve other fitness qualities. The second book is about conditioning. The author is a Canadian federal LEO and a former paratrooper. I think I paid $5 for the first one and $10 for the second one. They are only available as ebooks.

www.tacticalbarbell.com

Almost forgot to mention Simple and Sinister by Pavel Tsatsouline. Simple but deep program that focuses on mobility and 2 kettlebell exercises: the one hand swing and the Turkish Get Up. The intermediate goal for a male is to be able to do 100 1 arm swings with a 70 lb bell in 5 minutes followed by 10 TGU in 10 minutes with the same weight.

I learned of that book from Mike Prevost's blog which has a bunch of great info.

http://prevost-training.blogspot.com...ed-on.html?m=1

I agree with John Hearne that Larry Lindenman at TPI is an excellent resource.

I read the same books and really liked them. I was stalling out on bench while doing a PPL split, but after trying his "Operator" template I put almost 20 pounds on my 5 rep max in about 1.5 months (caveat, I'm about as non-operator as it gets and it may have been somewhat due to noob gains). I was pretty much killing myself in the gym trying to grind out 5 sets of 5 with nearly my 5 rep max every single workout, and despite the fact that on TB I lifted much less weight than before, the way he programs the weight you use really helped me recover faster.

Right now I'm doing his Zulu template. Workout A is bench, rows, and overhead press. B is squats and deads. I try to run or row once a week but I have to admit I hate cardio.

[JHC]

63 years old.... 6 feet 4 inches 235 pounds
Eat Oatmeal 2 times a day.
Protein in oatmeal with a little honey and Greek yogurt.
Not much red meat... tuna.... chicken ... dark chocolate .. and other good stuff.
3 Cups of Coffee a day and water.
Lift 4 to 5 times a week and some times do some Forms and bag work.
I did a 315 pound Incline bench press a few Months ago.
My heavy lifting days are over ... Age catches up to everyone... but I am still no walk in the park in terms of being able to defend myself in a bad situation thanks to years of weight lifting martial arts and my mind set .

I officially request the incline dumbbell bench video!

[SouthNarc]

Usually alternate powerlifting days with grappling days, either wrestling or BJJ. Looking to hit 300, 400, and 500 on bench, squat and deadlift respectively by the time I'm 50. Less than 100 lbs to go on each lift and 2.5 years to do it in!

[jc000]

I'm 6'0 and hover around 225, mostly doing grappling / striking supplemented with a lot of (slower-paced) mountain biking and hiking that I do with my small kids. No weights at all and am considering getting back into it to build strength. I have some fat to lose for sure, was not blessed with a super metabolism.

I'd like to get down to 205 consistently and build strength. Will incorporating creatine for strength building purposes make it hard to lose weight?

[TCinVA]

When it comes to fitness, I try to shut up and do what Larry Lindeman says on TPI. He is a very accessible source for evidence based training information. I'm currently working the Stronglifts program. People will argue whether it is the BEST training program but it is the most refined. I'm using the paid app for my Android and find it very easy to do.

Pretty much that.

It's a bit like shooting...very skilled shooters can discuss the nuance of their approach and how it benefits them, but their skill level didn't happen because they found This One Weird Trick To Make You Shoot Like A Boss! They did the work and discovered efficiencies along the way.

No way around doing the work.

I'd also throw in Layne Norton's series of videos on youtube. (He's a PHD, did his doctoral work on protein synthesis) He blows up a lot of myths and legends about training and lifting.

[YVK]

That sucks for me about the night shift thing too. Would it be safe to assume not a lot of them worked in healthcare? ��

Nope, most are normal people, although two out three of my best nanogenerians are MDs. One's radiologist (I quote "1946 class of NU, also the year I quit smoking"), so not much night work, at least when he practiced. Besides living by himself and exercising daily, he does 150 CME hours annually. Another is OB who came in at night at times; yet again, in his times midwives attended to a lot of deliveries, especially at night time. The man is 92, walks 3/4 of a mile 4 times a week.

[Irelander]

I am liking this thread but must admit I am a bit lost. I don't live anywhere near a gym so I just workout at home very early in the morning. I just have a couple of dumbbells with a set of plates to add on. I mostly do body weight exercises like pushups, pullups, rope climbs. I also do some P90X type ab workouts and I try to run about 2 miles 3x a week. But with a small child that doesn't sleep the greatest yet I end up skipping my workout if its been a rough night.

I was doing the Recon Ron pull program and was enjoying it but ended up with some tendinitis type pain in my brachioradialis so I quit doing pullups for about a year.

I'd like to get more into strength and mobility training but not really sure where to start especially with no access to a gym. I have noted the books list in this thread but would appreciate any advice you all could give for a beginner like me.

BTW...I'm 6'0"...173lb.

[Chance]

Everything YVK and SLG have said thus far is spot on. Here's a few things that popped into my head:

-Aesthetics are not invalid impetus, but that's going to take on less importance at different points in your life. Don't do anything stupid in the short term that's going to have long term consequences. The whole "whatever it takes" mindset is pretty common amongst highly motivated individuals, but it can bite you in the ass, big time.

-Find good sources of information. There are as many old-wives tales in fitness as there are in shooting. Back when I was really into this stuff, in the early and mid-00's, Muscular Development magazine was my goto for good info. They're still around, but I have no idea if they're still quality.

-Don't be afraid of trying new forms of fitness if you get bored. I know it's easy to say, "If I keep doing so much cardio, I'm going to lose some mass", but if you feel like doing cardio when just thinking about the monotony of doing one more freaking barbell curl is enough to make you skip the gym entirely, then do some cardio. That's what happened to me: I got so bored, I stopped doing anything, and years of hard work has been flushed.

-Sink some money into a quality body-composition scale. They're many orders of magnitude more useful than just a body-weight scale.

-Throw notes from your journal into a spreadsheet. It makes it a lot easier to track your long-term progress when you can make some plots with a few button clicks.