Training & Aging: The Good, Bad & Ugly

Training & Aging: The Good, Bad & Ugly

What are some physical health and strength changes that happen to the body as we get older? Is healing slower when we get older? How much strength training should people in their 50s do, and what are some tips for getting the most out of strength training at this age? On this episode of The New Helix Experience podcast, Tim Frey shares about Training & Aging: The Good, Bad & Ugly.

You’ll Learn:

  • What happens when we age in relation to physical health/strength?
  • What happens to the body’s ability to recover as we age?
  • What is the optimal training dose in your 50s?

Resources:

Connect with Tim on Twitter and Instagram

00:00:00
Alright guys, when you get into this episode and the question from Wise master Gareth, have you done any or much research into training or recovery as you age?

00:00:10
Is there anything that changes or should change as you get into 50s and training pretty intensely five to six days a week asking

00:00:18
For a friend.

00:00:19
I’m not sure who you could be asking about that Gareth

00:00:20
But let’s get into the story with a couple of questions and discussion points for this episode.

00:00:27
First one was kind of post here was let’s start out with essentially what happens when we age in relation to physical health and strength.

00:00:35
So essentially, as we age, the body undergoes a bunch of changes that affect the ability to be strong, healthy, and fit. The main one here is lesser muscle mass and the technical term for it is sarcopenia.

00:00:48
Think of to is 25 or 50 on it is a big age discrepancy there, but we lose. I think it’s 25, we lose 1% of muscle mass per year, some 1%.

00:01:00
One not sound like a lot, but you start stacking percentages on percentages here. One percent, 1% of 1% of 1% and then we’re losing a bunch of muscle.

00:01:08
Every year from 25. So if you listen to this until you pull you over 25, we’re getting near 25. So imagine next year.

00:01:17
So you want 25 right now, and then you don’t do anything, you lose 1% muscle year after that and you get from 100 kilos to 99 and then another another another another.

00:01:27
Then we go from there having 100 kilos of muscle is obviously heat.

00:01:31
But this is something just naturally occurs. Fear not. There are things you can do about it which will go through.

00:01:37
Soon the next thing that happens is wages. We have a reduction in bone mineral density, so essentially like the density of your bones.

00:01:44
When the density of your bones decreases, we have increase and more susceptibility to fractures and breaks. This is why when an older person falls like a ******* real old person.

00:01:57
And and they break the heap, etcetera. It’s basically like rest in peace like you’ve done because they’re bone mineral density and they’re bone thickness.

00:02:05
Is not as great as someone that’s young, so obviously we want to maximise that. The third thing we’ve got is decrease in flexibility.

00:02:13
This is more of like a move it slash, don’t move it or lose it principle you will find as you age your ability to retain.

00:02:26
You know, said physical capabilities would decrease, so you’ll get weak and faster. You will lose the flexibility faster, you’ll lose fitness faster as you age. Your body’s ability to naturally or just.

00:02:39
Unnaturally hold these things on decreases because your body is literally slowing down. You only have a certain amount of years in the tank, so to speak, with current technology, mixing is slow reaction time and reflexes. Reaction time will slow down which effects our ability to move.

00:02:59
With precision and you know, along with that we’ve got like coordination.

00:03:06
Reaction speeds. There’s tonnes of things. They’ll generally will slow down.

00:03:11
That’s why I.

00:03:11
Like most of really good athletes are in that late 20s, early 30s coming category, that’s when the body is also peaking and their ability or skills is also peaking.

00:03:25
And then lastly, we have decreased cardiovascular function. So as we age like the heart, blood vessels become less efficient, which leads to decreased endurance and overall physical performance. And it’s important to note.

00:03:39
Yeah, yeah. Loss of muscle. Loss of fried paneer density, decreased flexibility, reaction times and cardiovascular function.

00:03:48
They can all be mitigated with essentially keeping a routine or keeping activity going.

00:03:57
It’s super important that you know you get a routine in your early years and then keep and in summary, at this point, as hard as it is to here, I guess we are just dying very slowly. As bleak as that sounds.

00:04:13
The next question I had was what happens to the body’s ability to recover as we age?

00:04:20
So the bodies ability to recover from essentially like various stresses, injury illness declines as you age due to, you know the main factors is slower cell turnover. So the amount of cells we have in the body is like a finite amount, so.

00:04:40
Let’s say we have.

00:04:42
You know, when we’re born is 1,000,000 and.

00:04:43
Then every year.

00:04:44
That kind of turnover and become less and less and less so it’s like a finite amount, which means we have less to help with the recovery process.

00:04:54
Second main point is we have a reduction in hormone production, so hormones play a important role in the body’s recovery process as we age.

00:05:04
Should hormones such as growth online testosterone, which generally decreases?

00:05:09
The age and with decreases in those we have a slower recovery process, although it’s not like the be all and end or when we have a weakening of the immune system which plays a crucial role in fighting with infection.

00:05:24
The damaged tissues, essentially as we age, the immune system becomes less efficient, which can impair the body’s ability to recover from illness.

00:05:34
Full fear. We have clinic health conditions. So as we age we have clinic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritic illnesses.

00:05:44
Chances of contracting those.

00:05:48
Generally I feel because you just do more locked up sheet to your body for a longer period of time.

00:05:54
Therefore, it’s chances of breaking down and you become a lot higher. And then lastly, we have lifestyle factors such as sedentary lifestyle, poor nutrition and sleep.

00:06:08
So while the parties ability to come in May decline with age.

00:06:12
And regular exercise, healthy diet, adequate sleep, probably like the main they getting factors. Although I will talk about some other mitigating factors towards the end of the podcast.

00:06:23
And since you might take away from this section is everything gets harder as you age. I know I’m not painting.

00:06:29
A great picture.

00:06:29
Here. But that’s the reality of it. It’s like our body is not working as efficiently as it was when we were 20.

00:06:37
My third question was what is the optimal dose of training in your 50s? So the optimal dose essentially is depending on several factors including fitness level, health status, training age.

00:06:48
So I looked up some research from the American College of Sports Medicine and they will recommend that adults engage in strength training.

00:06:55
Last week, which I think is like a posting amount that’s *******, especially for someone that has been training a lot.

00:07:02
So for someone like Gareth, who transplants, he says week and he goes and drops to two sessions a week, he’s going to go backwards rather than forwards.

00:07:09
You know some tips to optimise strength training in 50S is incorporate resistance training and cardiovascular training to your routine focused on film and technique.

00:07:18
Super basic shipping costs gradually increase the weight sets and reps, so progressive overload allow adequate recovery time between workouts. Avoid overtraining so you could do that.

00:07:28
Like an actual.

00:07:29
Training program, which Gareth does and consult professionals and physiologists, nutritionists, those those things, if that is safe and effective for your individual goals and meet.

00:07:40
You know, like loss. It’s probably important to listen to your body and make modifications to your workout program as new.

00:07:45
If you like have pain and discomfort, injuries, those types of things, and you know, cheque your relevant healthcare, provide about you know, for what the data suggests and the recommendations by the American College of Sports Medicine, I think you need to fill this out on your own and find out what is too much or what is too little.

00:08:05
For you, I know you’re someone that’s been doing a challenge lately, training 5-6 days a week. Is that sustainable long term maybe?

00:08:14
Maybe not. No. Take away from this is you know the optimal dose for you, Gareth is the one that you can maintain.

00:08:22
There is no longitudinal data on recovery and training as we age. So what I mean by that is, you know there’s never been a generation like the ones that are ageing now that have gone through training consistently for the whole lot.

00:08:37
So we don’t have that kind of data, a lot of the the people in your age group would just be like.

00:08:42
Essentially, sloths like they are fat, lazy, overweight. They hate it. They’ve never done physical activity for a long time.

00:08:50
They’ve done it well, so I think that probably like high 90 percentile of your age group, you are the rarity of it. So what applies to you right now is not going to apply to everyone.

00:09:01
Because you are the tip of the spear, so to speak. So what? Two other things to consider with recovery.

00:09:08
Showing 2 about protein consumption real briefly. So we have amino acid called Lucene. Lucene tends to be the one, I mean acid that is studied quite thoroughly in the research and that is the one that is most related to muscle protein synthesis.

00:09:28
Your ability to build new muscle, so for younger populations, the recommended dose is 20 grams of losing.

00:09:35
For all the populations is 40. So what that would tell me is, as you age, you need more losing.

00:09:41
So I’d say like in your 50s and getting towards that 40 gram dose of losing post workout would be important that you can look for that is look for your printing shape that you use after a workout and see what kind of loosening content has in it. And then?

00:09:54
You can extrapolate how much you need.

00:09:56
You could specifically find, loosen supplementation and dose that what have you got to do. The guidelines for that is 20 to 40 grams and increases and as you age.

00:10:06
Second thing to consider guys here and I’m not telling you to go and do this and go and I’m telling you, go and research it is testosterone replacement therapy.

00:10:16
As we have discussed on this podcast previously, it massively improves your ability to recover, especially in your 50s. So something would look into is is that get your testosterone checked, see if it’s an issue contact.

00:10:33
Obviously it’s going to decrease with age, but you know testosterone man is related to.

00:10:38
Mental health, happiness, anxiety, depression, muscle mass, fat loss. You know, Lipitor. How much you have sex, all those types of things are related to testosterone in men’s. One of the most important factors or hormones to maintain and keep in cheque is testosterone in men.

00:10:56
Thanks for listening.

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