Dr. Sully returns to discuss why strength training is absolutely essential for seniors, and how they can get stronger in their 50's and beyond. Strength training transforms the aging adult into an athlete of aging - the Masters Athlete. So, how should seniors exercise? With barbells, of course. Some modifications may be needed, but squats, presses, bench presses and deadlifts are the exercise prescription the doctor ordered.

How Should Seniors Exercise?
Nobody doesn’t need to be strong. Strength is the most fundamental fitness attribute, forming the foundation for all others. Strength is the basis for power, agility, speed, endurance, and balance. These are the capacities that allow us to meet the demands of our life and our environment.

So, everybody needs strength, which means everybody needs strength training. But nobody needs strength training more than seniors. Why? Because of all the arenas of life that demand fitness, aging is the most brutal of all. The aging process, if uncontested, is characterized by the steady loss of muscle tissue and strength, of balance and stamina, of bone density and resistance to illness and injury. Strength training preserves all of these vital tissues and capacities, which is why physicians and scientists increasingly recognize it as absolutely essential. Strength training transforms the aging adult into an athlete of aging – the Masters Athlete.

The Masters Athlete
Now, you might think that strength training for seniors would be completely different from training for younger people. But nothing could be further from the truth. Our work with Masters Athletes has shown us that the best results are realized when we put seniors on a program that is as close AS POSSIBLE to the programs we use in younger athletes. When we put a young person on a strength training program, we use barbell exercises–squats, presses, bench presses, and deadlifts, and we train these movements in a linear progression, a program in which we add weight to the bar at every training session.

What’s the ideal program for Masters Athlete, say aged 70? Well, it’s barbell exercises: squats, presses, bench presses, and deadlifts, trained in a linear progression. The closer we can keep seniors to a standard program with standard exercises, the better results we get. Using this approach with seniors is safe, productive and powerful.

Of course, in practice, things can get a little more complicated. There’s going to be a lot more variability in an older population than a younger one, because these people have lived long and different lives, with more time for their diverse experiences and genetics to manifest as different abilities and disabilities, different strengths and weaknesses.

So while we try to keep seniors as close to standard exercise selection and programming as possible, modifications are often required. Here are some of the most common modifications we encounter in practice.



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