Strength Training for Life After 40
Jonathon Sullivan
Strength training is the most effective medicine for aging — and the evidence is overwhelming.
After age 30, you lose 3 to 8 percent of muscle mass per decade. Sullivan, an emergency physician and competitive powerlifter, makes the clinical case that heavy compound lifts reverse sarcopenia, increase bone density, and reduce all-cause mortality.
Everything Sullivan wants you to walk away with
Exercise has beneficial effects at every level of biological organization — molecular, cellular, organ, and neuropsychiatric. Modern drugs treat symptoms of the Sick Aging Phenotype. Exercise attacks the root cause.
Unused muscle downregulates insulin receptors and begins to eat itself. Activity becomes more tiring, so you move less, which accelerates the cycle. The 25-30% of North Americans with metabolic syndrome are trapped in this spiral.
These fast-twitch fibers are disproportionately responsible for the strength, power, and muscle mass you lose with aging. Only high-intensity resistance training can salvage them — aerobic endurance training cannot begin to approach this effect.
Getting old doesn't have to guarantee frailty and loss of independence. With discipline and hard work, you can compress the morbidity of aging into a tiny sliver of your life — strong and useful to the last.
Compound barbell lifts improve muscle mass, bone density, hormonal health, metabolic function, mobility, balance, and body composition simultaneously. They train natural human movement patterns through a full range of motion.
Correct strength training through the entire range of motion trains kinesthetic perception, neuromuscular stability, and the ability to maintain your center of mass over a stable balance point. These are what keep you off the floor at 80.
Unlike drugs where sicker patients get higher doses, exercise starts low and progresses. Your improved strength allows you to train harder, which improves you further. This principle of progressive overload is fundamental to how the medicine works.
Exercises describe a natural range of motion on a stable surface with carefully selected, incrementally increasing loads. There are no unpredictable forces, impacts, or joint moments. It is well-tolerated by individuals of any age.
The goal is functional independence: carrying groceries, getting off the floor, snatching a child from danger, remodeling the bathroom, making love to your spouse. Aesthetics are a welcome byproduct, not the point.
Bad luck and disease can strike the strongest. But instead of dwindling into weakness, you can make your ending like a failed last rep — strong, vigorous, and useful to the final day. Time always wins. But you can make it earn every inch.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Jonathon M. Sullivan and Andy Baker
In recent years there has been an explosion of biomedical evidence on resistance training in the aged, in women, in children, and in people suffering from conditions ranging from diabetes and hypertension to congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease. The conclusion is unambiguous: everybody who can lift weights should lift weights. This most emphatically includes those in their 40s and beyond.
Strength training can slow, arrest, or even reverse many of the degenerative effects of aging — loss of muscle and strength, brittle bones, floppy ligaments, dysfunctional joints, and the decline of mobility and balance. Instead of losing lean mass and replacing it with fat, healthy aging can be characterized by the retention or even addition of healthy, functional tissue. You can think of every bout of strength training as a prudent deposit into a “Physiological 401K”: saving strong muscle, hard bone, and full mobility for your retirement.
This book is both a prospectus and a training manual — theory and practice. It provides an evidence-based case for why you should invest the time and effort to learn a few basic barbell and conditioning exercises, and a practical examination of exactly what must be done and how these exercises can be incorporated into a complete, lifelong training program.
For too long, aging has been an excuse to take it easy, to avoid the “dangers” of over-activity, to act your age, and to consider yourself fit if you can get through a few holes of golf or hobble around the park twice a week.
Nobody is promising perfect health or even longevity. Getting strong won’t bring back your eyesight, restore your bald spot, shrink your prostate, or smooth your wrinkles. Aging always ends in decline and death. Bad luck and disease can strike down even the strongest, just as a bad market can ruin a wise investor. But getting old — even very old — doesn’t have to guarantee frailty, loss of independence, weakness, and misery. It is possible, in fact it is essential, to save strong, healthy tissue for the years when you’ll need it most. With discipline, hard work, and a little luck, you can compress the morbidity of aging into a tiny sliver of your life cycle, remaining strong and resilient well into your final years. Instead of dwindling into an atrophic puddle of sick fat, you can make your ending like a failed last rep at the end of a final workout — strong, vigorous, and useful, to the last. Time always wins in the end. But resistance is not futile.
Aging in the postmodern era can produce either the healthiest seniors the world has ever seen, or a ghastly and increasingly common syndrome of maladaptive aging: the Sick Aging Phenotype. This is a complex of interrelated and synergistic processes in which the metabolic syndrome, muscle and bone loss, frailty, loss of function and independence, and an ever-growing stew of pharmaceuticals conspire to destroy the health and quality of life of the aging adult.
Two organisms of the same species with identical or nearly identical genotypes will tend to have very similar phenotypes — but their phenotypes can also be very different. Modern aging and death phenotypes are increasingly the product of abundance, longevity, and idleness. The major cardiovascular diseases (including stroke) are by far the leading cause of mortality. Cancer runs second, while diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and respiratory diseases bring up the rear. When infectious diseases do kill us, they tend to do so at the extremes of age and ill health.
The Sick Aging Phenotype can be summed up in a few words: metabolic syndrome, sarcopenia and osteopenia, frailty, and polypharmacy.
The metabolic syndrome is a key driver of unhealthy aging in developed countries, affecting 25 to 30% of the population of North America. In medicine, a syndrome is a constellation of symptoms, findings, and disorders that tend to occur together. Its components include:
People with metabolic syndrome or its components are more likely to become frail, to suffer stroke, cardiovascular disease and heart attack, to develop heart and kidney failure, and to suffer from erectile dysfunction, depression, loss of independence, and premature death.
The behaviors that affect weight are what you eat, how much you eat, and how much energy you burn through physical work and exercise. Increased energy intake and a sedentary lifestyle upset the body’s energy balance. This is even more catastrophic than it sounds, because insulin isn’t just a glucose-regulating hormone — its effects are far deeper and more fundamental. Insulin is a growth factor. When it binds to its receptor it triggers not just glucose uptake, but also a network of powerful growth and survival responses at the cellular and genetic levels. Insulin signaling tells tissues they are in a fed state and tells the body that circumstances are ideal for growth, development, and repair. Insulin resistance in the setting of overeating and sedentary lifestyle sends an inappropriate and paradoxical message that the organism is unfed.
Unused, detrained muscle downregulates insulin receptors, turns off protein synthesis, and begins to consume itself to provide calories and amino acids to the rest of the body — which, because of decreased insulin signaling, thinks it’s hungry. Activity becomes more tiring and uncomfortable. The organism becomes more inactive. And so the vicious cycle continues, affecting not just muscle but tendons, ligaments, and other tissues that lose stiffness and become more susceptible to injury.
Eventually hyperglycemia slides into full-blown diabetes, requiring oral medications like metformin or glyburide to control blood sugar. These medications are effective for a while, but they don’t address the real root of the disease, and they carry significant — occasionally fatal — side effects. Those who display this phenotype invariably present with a bag full of powerful medicines, many of which work antagonistically or synergistically in unwholesome ways.
Exercise has beneficial effects at every stratum of biological organization, from the molecular and cellular levels to the realm of neuropsychiatric health. It is the medicine that actually gets to the root of the Sick Aging Phenotype, instead of just treating its symptoms.
“Medicine” has become almost synonymous with “drug,” and “health care” has come to mean going to a doctor to find out what pills to take. But modern drugs don’t get to the root of the problem — and they never will, because health will never come in a pill.
No drug in the world will ever match the power of exercise medicine. No drug will ever confer so many beneficial effects to so many organ systems, at so little cost, with so few side effects.
Weight-bearing exercise improves bone density, joint function, tendon elasticity and strength, range of motion, and overall physical function. Exercise improves cardiac stroke volume, decreases resting heart rate, inhibits the development and progression of hypertension, promotes more favorable blood-lipid profiles, and appears to retard the development of peripheral vascular disease — including coronary artery and cerebrovascular disease — with attendant decreases in the risk of heart attack and stroke.
There is an interesting paradox here: intense physical activity actually increases the production of free radicals, just as an engine running at high RPMs generates more exhaust. Yet regular, vigorous exercise reduces actual cellular free radical stress and damage. It appears that exercise-induced oxidative stress promotes healthy biochemical adaptations that increase cellular tolerance to free radicals.
The effect of exercise on growth factor release, neurotransmitter systems, vascular signaling molecules, antioxidant molecules, the growth of new mitochondria, the growth of new blood vessels, and a beneficial effect on brain vascular disease have all been cited as mechanisms by which exercise promotes brain health and fights cognitive impairment. Exercise promotes brain plasticity, decreases the loss of brain tissue in aging, and is increasingly prescribed for patients with stroke and Parkinsonism. Research strongly indicates that exercise is critical for maintaining brain function as you age. On the whole, the preponderance of evidence indicates that exercise, mental health, and a better life all tend to go together.
A rapidly growing body of research has demonstrated the positive effects of physical exercise in patients with hypertension, heart failure, kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, osteopenia, arthritis, and dementia.
The primary power of exercise is its ability to prevent disease. Any disease state, once established, is likely to involve structural, epigenetic, and systemic changes that make reversal difficult or even physically impossible. The best treatment is to not get the disease in the first place. Exercise clearly decreases the risk of developing metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, and there is tantalizing (but not definitive) evidence of preventative effects against cancer and some forms of dementia.
Aging and degeneration are never cured — they’re managed. Physical inactivity, a principal driver of the Sick Aging Phenotype, can only be treated by regular, vigorous, lifelong exercise. It’s a medicine, but it’s not a cure.
Consider the way most medicines are dosed: as the patient gets sicker, the dose is increased or another drug is added; if the patient improves, the doctor tries to decrease the dose. Exercise medicine is the exact opposite. When used properly, the dose goes up as you get healthier. You start weak and deconditioned. You begin a regimen. Your strength and fitness improve. So you work out a little harder, increasing the dose. The increased dose improves your conditioning still further, allowing you to increase the dose again. This “inverted dosing” illustrates the principle of progressive overload, which is fundamental to the administration of exercise medicine.
At the most fundamental level, exercise is physical activity. Going for a walk is exercise. Yoga is exercise. Cleaning out the garage is exercise. So are jogging, lifting weights, fencing, badminton, and Pilates. All of these are better than being a couch potato. But not all forms of exercise are created equal. Exercise medicine comes in different formulations, with different dosing strengths, routes of administration, efficacies, and side-effect profiles.
Strength training is traditionally and properly conducted with exercises that describe a natural but complete range of motion on a stable surface, using carefully selected loads that increase over time. Properly designed strength training programs avoid unpredictable forces, impacts, and joint moments. Correct strength training is therefore incredibly safe and well-tolerated by individuals of any age.
Training — exercise medicine that is safe, effective, efficient, quantifiable, and precisely prescribed and administered to achieve specific physiological and performance goals.
You need a program that hits all the General Fitness Attributes: strength, power, mobility, balance, endurance, and body composition. But strength training and endurance training compete with each other for valuable training time. Endurance can be built much more quickly than strength, but it takes committed training time to maintain endurance, which decays far more quickly than strength.
Aging muscle is characterized by the preferential atrophy of high-power Type II fibers, and the atrophy of these fibers is disproportionately responsible for the loss of muscle mass and strength in aging. Training in the high-intensity, high-power, “anaerobic” range — and in particular strength training — allows the Masters Athlete to hang on to this vulnerable population of fibers, or, if they have atrophied, to return them to the land of the living and make them bigger and stronger. High-intensity training, and in particular strength training, has a powerful effect on the maintenance of muscle mass and strength in the aging athlete in a way that aerobic endurance training simply cannot approach.
The biological realities of aging indicate that training for strength should take precedence over training for aerobic endurance. Strength training puts you at the high-intensity end of the energy spectrum and promotes the salvage, retention, and development of the precious high-power Type II muscle fibers that are disproportionately lost with age, maximizing your ability to hold on to muscle mass and function.
There are other fitness attributes to consider besides strength and endurance: power, mobility, balance, and body composition. The Masters Athlete needs them all — and all of these attributes are addressed more substantively and appropriately by training for strength than by training for endurance.
Properly performed and programmed, resistance training increases mobility — your ability to perform within the full and natural range of motion with agility and coordination — by strengthening normal human movement patterns throughout that full range of motion. Correct strength training doesn’t just increase mobility; it actually demands and therefore trains mobility, in a way that running, cycling, or even swimming cannot approach.
Further still, properly performed resistance exercise trains balance — your ability to express normal human movement patterns with stability, safety, and confidence. Correct strength training through the entire range of motion demands and therefore trains your “kinesthetic” perception, which tells you where your body, your body parts, and your center of mass are located relative to gravity and the floor. It also demands and trains the neuromuscular and skeletal components that maintain your center of mass over a stable balance point.
What the gerontologists call “functioning” is the ability to carry out activities of daily life, including those that bring joy and give life meaning: getting out of bed, snatching a child from danger, lifting a box overhead into a cupboard, picking up a heavy bag of groceries, leaping for joy, playing Frisbee with the dog, remodeling the bathroom, rowing a boat, or making love to your spouse.
Although fat loss is associated in the public and medical minds with aerobic exercise, there is growing recognition that resistance training can increase fat loss and decrease fat gains by maximizing muscle mass and muscle energy expenditure.
In exercise physiology, cardiovascular fitness is closely associated with VO₂max — the maximal rate at which an individual can deliver oxygen to tissues during exercise, sometimes called maximal aerobic capacity. Many investigators find that strength training alone produces only very small increases in VO₂max, or none at all. These findings underscore the importance of including a conditioning component in your exercise program.
No form of exercise appears able to cure established hypertension, but it now appears that both aerobic and strength training exert positive influences on this condition. It is also now apparent that strength training in patients with heart failure is safe and improves exercise tolerance, function, and quality of life. Research suggests that strength training — characterized by bouts of intense effort interspersed with lighter activity or rest — may be more appropriate for this population than endurance-based aerobic training.
On balance, the preponderance of available scientific evidence indicates that endurance training is probably superior to strength training for the optimization of cardiopulmonary fitness and health. However, when you’re sixty or seventy, you’re not going to need to run 20 miles, or 10, or even 3. You’re going to need muscle, bone, strength, power, mobility, balance — and yes, some endurance.
Too often, the aging individual sees that they are getting weaker and so lowers their expectations and efforts — and thereby grows weaker still.
In the arena of daily life, no one needs to lie on their belly and flex their hamstrings against resistance, do an isolated knee extension, or perform a pectoral fly. No normal human being ever performs these movements against significant resistance outside a gym. They are not in the repertoire of normal human movement patterns. What aging adults do in the arena of daily life is sit down, stand up, push things away, pull things in, lift things off the floor, and heave things over their heads. These simple, natural movement patterns are the building blocks of life as a physical being, and taken together they encompass the functional range of motion of the human organism.
The advantages of focusing on movements instead of muscles run deep. There are about 640 muscles in the human body, but just a few basic movement patterns capture input from the vast majority of this muscle mass. If you take the basic patterns of squatting down and standing up, pushing something away, lifting something overhead, and lifting something heavy off the floor, you will strengthen and condition the entire musculoskeletal system and make all of those movements stronger throughout the natural range of motion, increasing both strength and mobility.
Four simple exercises performed over the course of a 2- to 3-day-per-week program, combined if necessary with intense conditioning drills, will drive profound and dramatic improvements in strength, power, endurance, mobility, balance, body composition, and health.
The Squat is the cornerstone. You simply squat down and stand up again. Loading this normal human movement pattern recruits a vast volume of muscle tissue over a complete range of motion, forcing major improvements in overall strength, muscle mass, joint integrity, back strength, conditioning, and overall athleticism.
The Deadlift is nothing more than lifting a heavy barbell off the floor — another fundamental movement pattern. It is complementary to the squat and allows you to lift more weight than any other exercise. It strengthens the back, legs, trunk, hips, shoulders, and grip. It is particularly accessible to older trainees with limitations in their range of motion and produces transformative changes in confidence, self-image, and outlook.
The Press trains the fundamental pattern of lifting something overhead. Because it is performed standing, it demands balance and recruits muscle mass from the entire body, including the legs, thighs, hips, back, abdomen, and chest.
The Bench Press trains the basic human movement pattern of pushing something away from you. It is complementary to the overhead press and promotes massive increases in upper body strength.
Although they are not essential, the Olympic lift variants — the power clean and the power snatch — may be used by a few select Masters with the necessary aptitude and desire.
After the initial stage of training, devoted entirely to the rapid accumulation of strength, a conditioning component is added. This may be your sport of choice — tennis, swimming, biking, hiking, martial arts — but the General Exercise Prescription fills this requirement through a high-intensity interval conditioning (HIIT) component, which can be pursued using a stationary bike, kettlebells, rowers, or sleds (the preferred option).
There are many materials available for instruction in barbell training. Rippetoe’s text and videos (available on StartingStrength.com) are considered far superior to other instructional materials available anywhere.
If you have the space, an investment of roughly $3,000 to $5,000 will result in a home facility far superior to what is available in the community — no waiting, no commute, no interference from others, no restrictive rules, and you can listen to whatever music you like.
Athletes must warm up with light weight, always starting with the empty bar (except for deadlifts) before progressing to heavier loads or performing the exercises at the weights prescribed for that day. Increases in weight over time must always be judicious and guided by the program, not by the athlete’s exuberance or ego.
The squat is performed with a shoulder-width stance, toes pointing out at about 30 degrees. As you descend, you drive your knees out so that your thighs are parallel with your feet. You open your hips, bend over, push your butt back, point your nipples at the floor, and keep your head in a neutral position. By about a third of the way down, your back angle is set and your knees are as far forward as they will get — no more than an inch or so beyond your toes — with your shins set like rigid posts. Your hips drop below your knees.
At this point, your chest is pointed at the floor, your hips are open, your thighs are spread, and your groin muscles and hamstrings approach their full extensibility, triggering a stretch reflex (the “bounce”) that helps drive you out of the bottom. You call upon this hip drive by thinking about driving your butt straight up, as if a winch on the ceiling is pulling your sacrum upward. By the time you are two-thirds of the way up, your back and shin angles begin to change as you assume an upright position. You stand up, let out your breath, take a deep breath, and squat again.
This method of squatting maximizes range of motion and recruits more muscle tissue than other variants because it incorporates the active hip, transforming the squat from a leg exercise into a movement that trains the entire posterior kinetic chain — the calf, groin muscles, hamstrings, femoral rotators, and spinal erectors. No other exercise comes close to training such a large volume of contractile tissue through such a large range of motion with such intensity. This is why the squat is the cornerstone of strength training.
Properly performed, the squat is simply the loaded version of a normal human movement pattern — a movement you were designed to perform.
The difference in carrying position between high-bar and low-bar may seem minor and inconsequential, but it isn’t. Even a few inches of change in bar position on the torso significantly shifts how the bar aligns with the athlete’s center of gravity. This affects the back angle — and the effectiveness of the movement — quite profoundly.
A huge amount of muscle is involved in the deadlift, including the muscles of the legs, hips, buttocks, lower back, abdomen, upper back, and chest. The squat may be the King of Exercises, but the deadlift is the Queen.
The deadlift begins with a standard barbell positioned directly over the middle of the feet. The bar is lifted straight up, in contact with the legs, with a grip just slightly wider than the stance. At the top, you are standing perfectly erect, head neutral, with straight knees and no bend at the waist. The bar is lowered quickly to the floor by reversing the movement. You breathe, reset your position, and pull again — from a dead stop each time.
The bar should be over the middle of your foot, about an inch from your shins. Keeping your knees as straight as possible and hips high, bend at the waist and take the bar low in your hands (toward the fingers, not the wrists) with straight arms. Without moving the bar, bring your shins forward just until they contact the bar. Then, without moving the bar or lowering your hips, raise your chest and tighten your entire body, locking your entire spine into rigid extension.
The purpose of good deadlift technique and setup isn’t to make your back vertical — it’s to make the bar path vertical, lifting the bar straight up over the middle of the foot.
If you have performed the movement correctly, the bar will end up where it started, over the middle of your feet. Keep your grip on the bar, keep your hips up, get tight, raise your chest, lock your back into extension, take a deep breath, and pull again.
Training the deadlift as described loads the back and therefore strengthens the back, making you stronger and harder to break. And that is the whole point.
The standing overhead press is an exercise in which the bar is held at the shoulders and lifted overhead, to a position directly above the shoulder joints and over the middle of the foot. For general strength training, the press can and should be performed to recruit muscle tissue from the entire body. Because it describes such a long range of motion and such a long potential moment arm, it demands balance and stabilizing contributions from the muscles of the lower extremities, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms. It is an excellent exercise for the development of upper body strength, balance, mobility, and proprioception.
The press, performed so as to exploit the hip chassis — the center of human power — recruits an enormous mass of muscle tissue from the feet to the forearms. Legs, glutes, abdominals, back muscles, shoulder and arm muscles, spinal erectors, pectorals, and traps all get a workout from loading this movement pattern.
The lifter pushes the hips forward, creating clearance between the bar and the chin, then drives the bar straight up, keeping it close to the face. As the bar just begins to pass the head, the lifter drives the torso forward to get the shoulders beneath the bar. The bar moves upward in a straight vertical line. The press is finished with a forceful shrug that completes the rotation of the scapula to support the humerus, which supports the forearm, which supports the bar.
When people think of upper-body exercises, they think about bench presses, flyes, and curls. But the standing overhead press is the paragon of upper body strength exercises, because no other upper body exercise describes such a long range of motion, recruits so much muscle mass, demands so much balance and coordination, or recapitulates such a universal human movement pattern.
The shoulder is designed not to impinge during this movement. You can help this natural design by shrugging hard at the top of the press, emphasizing the contraction of the trapezius, which drives proper rotation of the scapulae. And if you don’t put more weight on the bar than you’re ready for, and if you set up with proper grip, breathing, and stance each time, the press won’t hurt your shoulders.
Of the four primary barbell exercises, the bench is the only one that is not a structural exercise, and it describes the shortest range of motion. However, it allows considerable weight to be handled and produces marked improvements in upper body strength. The bench trains the anterior muscles of the chest and shoulders, and also trains the muscles of the upper extremity, particularly the triceps.
The focus is on a prototypical form in which the torso is parallel to the ground, the feet are flat on the floor, and the grip width permits the forearms to be perpendicular to the floor at the bottom of the movement. Your upper back at the shoulder blades and the buttocks must remain in contact with the bench, but the lumbar spine should be arched such that a coach could pass a hand beneath your lower back. The shoulders are pulled down and back, as if you are pinching an object between your shoulder blades. This enhances the raising of the chest — improving the angle of chest muscle engagement — and decreases the distance the bar travels.
Assume a grip width that, at the bottom of the movement with the bar touching your chest, puts your forearms perpendicular to the ground. This will almost always be about one hand width wider than the press grip. With the bar locked out over the shoulder joints, note the bar’s position against the ceiling. Keep your eyes on that point during the entire set, bringing the bar to this same point at the end of every repetition. Lower the bar slowly to touch the middle of your sternum lightly, then drive up hard. The mid-sternum position drops the elbows to about 75 degrees of humeral abduction and prevents shoulder impingement. Do not watch the bar — keep your eyes fixed on the stationary reference and “stare” the bar into place at the top.
If shoulder pain occurs, three techniques can be combined. First, narrow the grip: starting with pinkies on the scores, experiment with a grip that is thumbs-distance from the smooth part of the bar, and if needed, move the grip in 1 to 2 finger widths at a time. Second, touch the bar lower — with as much arch as possible, bringing the bar down below the sternum to the very top of the abdominals. Third, tuck the elbows instead of allowing them to flare out. A combination of close grip, low touch point, and tucked elbows will allow almost any trainee to safely and effectively bench press. Additionally, microloading should be used to the extent possible — for most Masters, 5-pound increases on the bench are significant.
Although it has a shorter kinetic chain than the other primary lifts, the bench press nevertheless trains a large volume of tissue in the chest, shoulders, arms, neck, and back. It is intense, recruits a large volume of muscle, and builds tremendous upper body strength and power. Training in this exercise has beneficial impacts on glucose disposal, insulin sensitivity, neuromuscular and bioenergetic adaptation, cardiovascular health, frailty, and function.
In the snatch, a barbell is pulled from the floor to a position overhead in a single, uninterrupted movement. The bar is caught with straight elbows — it may not be pressed out to full extension — and is usually racked with the lifter in a deep overhead squat position to reduce the distance the bar must be pulled. In the clean and jerk, the barbell is pulled from the floor and caught on the shoulders, usually in a deep front squat. This is the clean portion. The lifter then stands erect and slams the bar overhead in a single sharp, explosive movement (the jerk), racking the load on fully extended arms.
Power — Work is not dependent on time, but power is. Lifting a 100-pound bar 4 feet in 1 second expresses 10 times more power than doing it in 10 seconds. The ability to express power — the ability to explode — is fundamental to all athletic endeavors.
In both the clean and the snatch, the bar is pulled from the floor like a deadlift, and then begins to accelerate — its velocity increases the higher it moves — until the athlete jumps, explosively slamming hips, knees, and ankles into full and powerful extension. The power movements are important because they allow you to improve your ability to display what power you can produce as the strength upon which it is based increases.
At the completion of the movement, the athlete stands erect with the bar still racked on the shoulders. The bar is then either lowered down the front of the torso to be caught in the hands (like the top of a deadlift), or dropped to the platform if equipped with bumper plates.
The most important aspect of the snatch is that the bar is not pressed into lockout — the drop straightens out the elbows and wrists, not the triceps and deltoids. Any “press-out” in this position is intrinsically dangerous, disqualifies a snatch in competition, and should not be tolerated in training.
The clean and snatch can be hard on aging tendons, ligaments, and joints. They challenge the older athlete’s capacity to recover and can interfere with performance and progress on the more fundamental exercises. Accordingly, the power clean and power snatch are considered entirely optional for the Masters population. Particularly fit and active Masters who engage in sports or professions demanding power expression (track and field, combat sports, rugby, military and police work, etc.) may productively train these movements, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
Assistance exercises are frequently misunderstood and misused. Their proper role is to supplement and support progress in the primary barbell movements, but all too often they end up becoming the core of a program. This is unfortunate because they are completely unsuited for such a role. These movements typically recruit less muscle, use a shorter range of motion, impose less comprehensive training stresses, promote less general adaptation, and have far less potential for progressive development than the squat, deadlift, and pressing movements. When someone’s workout consists of barbell curls, leg presses, lat pull-downs, dips, and maybe bench presses, they are “majoring in the minors.”
Chin-ups and pull-ups performed through the full range of motion thoroughly work the lats, upper back, forearms, and biceps. Which variation you choose is not terribly important, and many trainees alternate. Chins use more muscle mass and are usually stronger than pull-ups; chins recruit greater biceps involvement, while pull-ups place more stress on the forearms and lats.
As with most assistance exercises, chins and pull-ups cannot be programmed at the same level of precision as big multi-joint barbell movements. Performance varies from day to day and a predictable linear progression is never realized. They are a “completion grade” at the end of the workout — you do them, but are not overly concerned with session-to-session improvement. Instead, performance is judged on a monthly basis.
For Masters who cannot perform pull-ups or chins due to excessive body weight or lack of strength, lat pull-downs or bodyweight rows are excellent alternatives.
Curls are the archetype of an overused exercise with limited utility. They train a very limited amount of muscle mass through a relatively short range of motion, do not promote the same gains in functional strength as the primary movements, usually confer minimal health and performance benefits, and can easily result in overuse injuries. That said, curls are not completely useless — they do promote accumulation of muscle mass, however limited, and that’s always a good thing.
The barbell curl, if properly performed and programmed, can be a useful assistance exercise for selected Masters with limitations in the primary barbell movements. Curls can be incrementally loaded over time, and steady progress has excellent carryover to those whose chin-up or lat pull-down strength has stagnated. Barbell curls should be done with a full range of motion, supinated forearm, and involvement of the shoulder. The bar should be curled up to the bottom of the chin and lowered to straight (but not completely relaxed) elbows. Two or three sets of 8–10 reps are sufficient.
The leg press is not a useful training modality for Masters who are able to squat in regular training. It is, however, valuable for preparing those who cannot squat due to a lack of strength throughout the entire range of motion.
One popular method for managing deadlift recovery is a weekly rotation between halting deadlifts and rack pulls. These exercises split the deadlift’s range of motion into two overlapping components that can be trained heavily but separately, reducing the demand on recovery capacity. Halting deadlifts begin on the floor and are pulled to just above knee height, then returned to the floor. Rack pulls begin just below the knees (set on the pins of a power rack) and are pulled to lockout. Alternating these two exercises allows you to pull heavy on a weekly basis without overtraining on the full movement.
When adjustment to a program is necessary, change one training variable at a time.
For the Masters Athlete in particular, there is little to be gained by comparing your own progress to that of others, other than to see what might be possible or detrimental. Train yourself to be the best you can be, beginning from your own unique starting line and progressing on your own unique journey.
Any rational training program, whatever its modality or training goals, is nothing more than a cycle of applying a physical stress, recovering and adapting to the stress, and then increasing the stress to drive progress.
Exhaustion is the alternate, unhappy ending of the General Adaptation Syndrome. If the stressor drives the organism too far from homeostasis, the physiological or structural disruption will overwhelm adaptive responses. Alternatively, if the stressor is within the organism’s adaptive range but is applied too often or for too long, adaptive capacities will ultimately fail and the organism will become progressively weaker and less adapted to the stress.
If the stress has been of sufficient but not excessive dose, and if recovery has been adequate, the organism will undergo adaptation — not only returning to its previous performance baseline but progressing to a higher state, expressing improved capacity to respond to a future stress. This is dependent on the correct application of the overload event.
The older the trainee, the less efficient recovery will be. The Masters Athlete simply cannot tolerate training stresses of the same dose or frequency as younger counterparts. This relative lack of efficiency in the recovery phase partially explains why older adults can’t productively train as often or increase their strength as quickly.
The principal components of effective recovery are active rest, adequate nutrition, quality sleep, hydration, and stress reduction. A very few nutritional supplements may be of some benefit, but most are unproven or even harmful.
“You don’t get stronger by lifting weights. You get stronger by recovering from lifting weights.”
Training 5 or more days a week will be entirely counterproductive for the Masters Athlete. This does not mean, however, that you revert to torpor on rest days. Exercise every day — but this is explicitly not the same thing as training every day. Active rest is unprogrammed, light physical activity: a walk in the woods, a bike ride with a friend, cleaning out the garage, T’ai Chi, dancing, a game of golf. This light exercise can actually promote recovery by keeping muscle and connective tissues supple and perfused with blood and nutrients. Light activity signals the body that it needs to be ready to move even on non-training days and maintains engagement with the life you are training for. The key is that active rest must be low in intensity and volume, especially during the novice phase.
For strength training, a caloric surplus must be present, and dietary protein will exceed the usual recommended daily allowance. Calculating a one-size-fits-all formula for daily caloric needs is a perilous undertaking — body composition, overall health, daily activity level, and training history all vary considerably in the Masters population.
Per pound of bodyweight: approximately 1.25 g protein, 1 g carbohydrate, and just under 0.5 g fat. For a typical 200-pound, 55-year-old untrained male at ~25% body fat, this works out to roughly 2,600 calories per day: ~250 g protein, ~200 g carbohydrate, ~90 g fat.
Build the diet starting with protein sources first. There is compelling evidence that older athletes need more high-quality protein than their younger counterparts to overcome the general anabolic resistance of aging. A good estimate is about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight from high-quality animal sources. A couple of protein shakes a day make this target much easier to hit. Whey is the preferred source, as it provides a very beneficial amino acid profile high in the critical branched-chain amino acids — leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Protein intake should be steady and consistent throughout the week.
During exercise, particularly high-intensity exercise, glucose and muscle glycogen are the body’s preferred energy source — carbohydrate must be present in muscle to fuel hard training. But too much dietary carbohydrate may promote fat accretion and possibly the development of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. A good starting place is bracketing: eating starchy carbs like bread, potatoes, and rice just before and soon after training, while keeping ingestion of such carbohydrates lower at other times. On non-training days and during meals not near the training session, get carbohydrates from fibrous vegetables and fruits. Eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables — as well as a variety of meat selections — is a good way to cover micronutrient needs. A practical recommendation is to regularly consume lots of “color” in fruits and vegetables.
As a general rule, nutritional supplements are valuable to those who make and market them, and just about nobody else.
Vitamin D — The major source is synthesis in the skin when exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D is critical for the absorption of minerals from dietary sources, particularly calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and phosphorous. Its central role in calcium absorption makes it essential for skeletal health.
Coffee and caffeine — The role of coffee as an ergogenic aid has been extensively studied. On balance, caffeine appears to promote better workout performance, probably due to effects on neuromuscular function, mood state, calcium release during contraction, and increased plasma catecholamines. It does not have a negative effect on hydration status in healthy humans — coffee and tea can serve double-duty as both mild workout stimulants and hydration agents. The real downside for the Master is the potential impact on sleep.
Creatine — Creatine supplements have been shown to be moderately useful for those engaged in anaerobic training. Supplementation doesn’t make you stronger directly; rather, it helps extend the capacity of the phosphagen system, potentially allowing you to make that last rep so you can get stronger. There is also some evidence it enhances muscle hypertrophy by promoting an increase in muscle cell nuclei and activation of satellite cells. Plain creatine monohydrate is sufficient — special formulations add nothing except cost and contamination. Contrary to what you may have heard, there is no conclusive evidence that creatine prevents or treats neurodegenerative diseases, nor any evidence that it harms the healthy kidney.
Hydration recommendations separate into two categories: maintenance and replacement. Maintenance hydration — for the athlete training a few hours a day without excessive insensible losses — calls for about 2 to 3 liters per day. For athletes who sweat very heavily, a gallon or more per day may be required.
Testosterone levels start to climb upon falling asleep, peaking during critical REM cycles that begin about 90 minutes in, and remain elevated until waking. Human growth hormone is also elevated during sleep. Eight hours of sleep is a reasonable target — eight hours of actual sleep, not two hours watching television followed by six hours of sleep. Eight hours of continuous sleep is not the same as eight hours interrupted three or four times a night.
A small glass of bourbon may initially ease you to sleep, but many report being wide awake a few hours later. Alcohol disrupts normal sleep cycle architecture, decreasing time in slow-wave (stages 3 and 4) sleep. Very spicy food in the evening is antagonistic to sleep for many, especially those in their sixth decade and beyond. Caffeine, nicotine, high-fat meals, chocolate, and alcohol all promote relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter and can lead to reflux and heartburn, disrupting sleep further.
Chronic stress suppresses anabolism and has unhealthy effects on cardiovascular parameters.
Sets of 1 to 3 reps at high intensity are classically associated with the production of raw strength and power. Sets of 8 to 12 reps at moderate intensity are used to increase muscle mass and size (hypertrophy).
A tremendous amount of practical coaching experience has shown that general strength is very efficiently developed with multiple 5-repetition sets. In novice programming, the 5-rep set is the target for all primary barbell movements. Sets of 5 work in the optimal range for both strength and muscle mass — the two primary goals of the novice. They occupy the “metabolic middle” of the strength training spectrum, producing a training stress powerful enough to drive adaptation while permitting recovery within a 48- to 72-hour window.
For strength work, a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes should be taken between work sets at the onset of training. As strength increases and the weight on the bar gets heavier, rest intervals of 8 to 10 minutes will be needed.
The importance of recording your work cannot be overemphasized. Training is a long-term, highly structured project in adjusting your physiology and performance to optimize your health.
Any increase in physical activity virtually guarantees short-term increases in strength for the rank novice. This phenomenon is known as the novice effect: any physical activity that requires even the most minimal effort will yield some positive effects for a completely untrained adult. The novice effect is responsible for much of the confusion about physical exercise found not only around the water cooler, but also in the exercise physiology literature.
The Starting Strength model prescribes a 3-day-per-week program, traditionally on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The point is not to prescribe particular weight increases but to illustrate that increases in loading will start out larger and then taper off.
| Week | Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Squat 75×5×3 | Squat 85×5×3 | Squat 95×5×3 |
| Bench 90×5×3 | Press 55×5×3 | Bench 95×5×3 | |
| Deadlift 95×5 | Deadlift 115×5 | Deadlift 135×5 | |
| 2 | Squat 105×5×3 | Squat 115×5×3 | Squat 125×5×3 |
| Press 60×5×3 | Bench 100×5×3 | Press 65×5×3 | |
| Deadlift 155×5 | Deadlift 175×5 | Deadlift 190×5 |
| Week | Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Squat 135×5×3 | Squat 145×5×3 | Squat 155×5×3 |
| Bench 105×5×3 | Press 70×5×3 | Bench 110×5×3 | |
| Deadlift 205×5 | Power Clean 95×3×5 | Deadlift 215×5 | |
| 4 | Squat 160×5×3 | Squat 165×5×3 | Squat 170×5×3 |
| Press 75×5×3 | Bench 115×5×3 | Press 80×5×3 | |
| Power Clean 100×3×5 | Deadlift 225×5 | Power Clean 105×3×5 | |
| 5 | Squat 175×5×3 | Squat 180×5×3 | Squat 185×5×3 |
| Bench 120×5×3 | Press 82.5×5×3 | Bench 122.5×5×3 | |
| Deadlift 235×5 | Power Clean 110×3×5 | Deadlift 245×5 |
If the trainee has been using the Starting Strength model (or a very close variation), they will rarely if ever need to add additional work to get progress going again. If the trainee is struggling to progress on the standard novice program, it will be for one of three reasons: (1) excessive training stress within the workout, (2) insufficient recovery between sessions, or (3) greed.
An athlete in their sixties will be far more likely to require recovery intervals extending beyond 72 hours and/or reductions in training volume to make progress beyond the rank novice phase.
Bench presses affect presses less than presses affect bench presses, probably because presses exhaust the triceps more than bench presses do. Once the triceps reserves are gone, all hope for effective benching evaporates. For this reason, it makes sense to bench first and press second. Moreover, after heavy benches the nervous system will be “primed” for a lighter pressing variation after dealing with the heavier weight.
A program based around just two major barbell movements will seem quite limited — and it is — but still represents a full-body workout with the potential to produce massive increases in strength and preserve muscle mass and function. Bench presses work the pectorals, triceps, and deltoids. Deadlifts effectively train the hamstrings, glutes, quads, low back, upper back, forearms, and abdominals. That’s the lion’s share of muscle mass.
Even short breaks from training tend to be a more significant setback for older trainees. A week of missed training for the flu might mean 2 to 3 weeks of training just to get back to where you left off.
Objectives provide focus: setting specific weight-rep goals for the year, getting ready for a physically demanding vacation or sporting event, excelling at a physical pastime, meeting the requirements of a strenuous profession — all can provide motivation and drive the individuation of an intermediate-level program.
Every time the athlete sets a new 5-rep max, the weight is increased by 2 to 5 pounds for the following week, but the rep goal is reduced to a set of 3. For each cycle of 3 weeks, the goal is to end by completing the target weight for 3 sets of 5 reps. Once achieved, 2 to 5 pounds are added for the next week, but the goal becomes 5 sets of 3 — the total workload remains the same, but triples at the new weight are easier than fives. This keeps weight on the bar and maintains volume while allowing the Master a bit of physical and mental respite. The second week, the weight stays the same with 4 sets of 4 reps — the additional rep per set is slightly harder and paves the way for a new 3×5 personal record on the last week. By that week, the trainee has handled this load on two previous occasions and should be well-prepared, mentally and physically.
| Week | Monday (Heavy Day) | Thursday (Light Day) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squat | Bench | Deadlift | Lt. Squat | Press | Chins | |
| 1 | 275×5×3 | 225×5×3 | 325×5 | 245×5×3 | 145×5×3 | 3 sets |
| 2 | 280×3×5 | 230×3×5 | 330×3 | 250×5×3 | 150×3×5 | 3 sets |
| 3 | 280×4×4 | 230×4×4 | 330×4 | 250×5×3 | 150×4×4 | 3 sets |
| 4 | 280×5×3 | 230×5×3 | 330×5 | 250×5×3 | 150×5×3 | 3 sets |
| 5 | 285×3×5 | 235×3×5 | 335×3 | 255×5×3 | 155×3×5 | 3 sets |
| 6 | 285×4×4 | 235×4×4 | 335×4 | 255×5×3 | 155×4×4 | 3 sets |
| 7 | 285×5×3 | 235×5×3 | 335×5 | 255×5×3 | 155×5×3 | 3 sets |
| 8 | 290×3×5 | 240×3×5 | 340×3 | 260×5×3 | 160×3×5 | 3 sets |
| 9 | 290×4×4 | 240×4×4 | 340×4 | 260×5×3 | 160×4×4 | 3 sets |
| 10 | 290×5×3 | 240×5×3 | 340×5 | 260×5×3 | 160×5×3 | 3 sets |
The Texas Method is suitable for intermediate Masters who have made strength acquisition their primary athletic focus and who are willing and able to train on a fairly grueling program. It has three fundamental components, reflecting the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation formulation of Selye’s syndrome.
Volume Day (traditionally Monday) is when the primary training stress is delivered. This is the most difficult workout of the week. Training stress is produced by performing exercises at moderately high intensity and high volume, to produce a very high “dose.” This level of stress is now needed to force an adaptation and will exceed the trainee’s capacity to recover before the next session.
Recovery Day (traditionally Wednesday) actively promotes recovery between difficult sessions while avoiding any stress that interferes with adaptation to the volume workout. The low-intensity, low-volume work flushes tired muscles with blood and keeps motor pathways fresh. It stimulates the ongoing biology of recovery triggered by volume day without impeding it.
Intensity Day (traditionally Friday) is where adaptation is displayed, but at low volume to avoid excessive stress. Unlike the novice progression — where each workout both displayed new strength and imposed new training stress — the Texas Method emphasizes a different aspect of the cycle in each session. Intensity day workouts usually call for just a single work set on each exercise. They are heavy and hard, but not so much as volume day, and not so much as to prevent delivery of a new, heavier volume stress the following Monday.
The entire week’s work is focused on the realization of the intensity day goals.
| Volume Day | Recovery Day | Intensity Day | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | |||
| Squat 5×5 | Squat 2×5 | Squat 1×5 | |
| Bench 5×5 | Press 3×5 | Bench 1×5 | |
| Deadlift 1×5 | Chins 3×8 | Power Clean 5×3 | |
| Week 2 | |||
| Squat 5×5 | Squat 2×5 | Squat 1×5 | |
| Press 5×5 | Bench 3×5 | Press 1×5 | |
| Deadlift 1×5 | Chins 3×8 | Power Clean 5×3 | |
Prescription: Weeks 1 and 2 are alternated. Squats and pressing movements on volume day are at 85–90% of intensity day targets. Recovery day squats and pressing movements are at 80–90% of volume day targets, at decreased volume. Adaptation with increased performance is displayed on intensity day — weight increases from one intensity day to the next.
Progressing on the Texas Method gets complicated sooner rather than later. The basic setup will not last forever — in fact, it likely won’t last longer than a few weeks, possibly a few months if recovery is going well. One of the biggest mistakes trainees of all ages make is trying to stay with an unmodified Texas Method template for far too long.
As weight gets heavier, displaying new strength with a 5-rep set every week becomes increasingly untenable. Two alternate methods are presented for intensity day programming:
Running it out is the simpler method. When you can no longer achieve a single set of 5 reps, continue to add weight but aim for 3 to 4 reps. Continue targeting 3 to 4 reps while adding weight each week. This progresses to 2 or 3 heavy doubles, and eventually to multiple heavy singles across five sets of 1 on intensity day.
Rotating rep ranges is the other approach. Remember that volume and intensity are control knobs on the programming machine, and it is the appropriate modulation of these training variables that ensures steady progress.
Limited rest time is an important component of the dynamic effort method. Five heavy sets of 5 (25 total reps) might take over half an hour to complete with 5-minute rest periods. However, the same volume (12 sets of 2) moved with maximum velocity might take less than 15 minutes. This can be a very powerful new stimulus to boost an athlete out of a training rut.
Just as sets and reps on the Texas Method can get stagnant, so can exercise selection. Usually a stalled lift is best unstuck through modification of volume or intensity — applied to volume day, intensity day, or both. But sometimes an athlete is so buried in a rut that nothing works. When this occurs, substitution of a supplemental exercise may be indicated. A supplemental exercise will almost always be barbell-based and will resemble the parent movement in both performance and load as closely as possible. Depending on the movement and the degree of regression, the supplemental movement can replace the primary exercise on either volume or intensity day.
Heavy-Light-Medium programs spread the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle over a one-week training period to produce a versatile intermediate training approach that is less grueling than the Texas Method and therefore more suitable for the majority of Masters. The two methods look remarkably similar, but key differences make Heavy-Light-Medium programs less stressful and easier on recovery. In this system, the heavy day is the focal point of the program.
| Heavy Day | Light Day | Medium Day |
|---|---|---|
| Squat 4×5 | Squat 2×5 (90%) | Squat 1–3×5 (95%) |
| Bench 4×5 | Press 3×5 | Bench 1–3×5 (95%) |
| Deadlift 1×5 | Chins 3×8–10 |
| Wk | Heavy | Light | Medium | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squat | Bench | Deadlift | Squat | Press | P. Snatch | Squat | Bench | P. Clean | |
| 1 | 300×5×3 | 250×5×3 | 375×5 | 270×5 | 175×5×3 | 120×2×3 | 285×5×2 | 235×5×2 | 165×3×3 |
| 2 | 315×3×3 | 262×3×3 | 395×3 | 270×5 | 185×3×3 | 120×2×3 | 285×5×2 | 235×5×2 | 165×3×3 |
| 3 | 335×1×3 | 274×1×3 | 420×1 | 270×5 | 176×5×3 | 120×2×3 | 285×5×2 | 235×5×2 | 165×3×3 |
| 4 | 305×5×3 | 252×5×3 | 380×5 | 275×5 | 186×3×3 | 122×2×3 | 290×5×2 | 240×5×2 | 168×3×3 |
| 5 | 320×3×3 | 264×3×3 | 400×3 | 275×5 | 177×5×3 | 122×2×3 | 290×5×2 | 240×5×2 | 168×3×3 |
| 6 | 340×1×3 | 276×1×3 | 425×1 | 275×5 | 187×3×3 | 122×2×3 | 290×5×2 | 240×5×2 | 168×3×3 |
| 7 | 310×5×3 | 254×5×3 | 385×5 | 280×5 | 178×5×3 | 125×2×3 | 295×5×2 | 245×5×2 | 170×3×3 |
| 8 | 325×3×3 | 266×3×3 | 405×3 | 280×5 | 188×3×3 | 125×2×3 | 295×5×2 | 245×5×2 | 170×3×3 |
Training at this level is not conducted for health or fitness, but rather to optimize performance for competition.
This approach keeps both volume and intensity at appropriate levels, but creates enough fluctuation that the trainee does not go stale over the course of a long series of repeated cycles.
Conditioning, also known as endurance training or “cardio,” is an essential component of the complete exercise prescription, magnifying the metabolic, cardiovascular, and performance benefits of strength training. Conditioning is far more sport- and vocation-specific than strength training. For many athletes, the best recommendation is simply to “lift weights and play your sport.” But for Masters who practice low-intensity sports or who train solely for health, this prescription does not suffice.
Strength training is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The objective is strength for life: membership in a sports league, skiing in the Rockies, or hiking a nature trail with your beloved. Once the foundation of strength is built, it must be complemented by appropriate conditioning so you can use that strength to engage in meaningful physical activities outside the gym.
The best data available suggests that combining strength and conditioning improves the general health and performance benefits of either modality alone. Significant fat loss, however, doesn’t happen in the gym — it happens at the dinner table. Attempts to “run off” a beer belly will sacrifice knees, ankles, and low backs, and such high-volume conditioning will be detrimental to building and maintaining strength and muscle mass. That is a fool’s trade-off.
Your conditioning component must be safe, have a broad therapeutic window, be as comprehensive as possible, specifically and effectively combat the Sick Aging Phenotype, be as specific as possible to the physical demands confronted by the individual athlete, and be as simple and efficient as possible.
To meet the criterion of safety, conditioning should be low in volume (to reduce interference effects, minimize residual fatigue, and avoid overtraining), incorporate low-impact repeated motor activities requiring minimal technical proficiency, and ideally avoid eccentric movement patterns, which produce soreness and interfere with recovery from strength training. A simple, stable, repetitive, low-impact exercise that produces the least soreness will be the safest.
Strength training should be generalized while conditioning should be specific, reflecting the power-capacity demands of the sport or profession. For most athletes, the prescription is simple: lift weights and practice your sport. From the standpoint of overall fitness for life, however, it’s a little more complicated. Consider a golfer — it’s ridiculous for his strength training to specifically emulate the movements of his sport. The General Exercise Prescription mandates a low-volume, high-intensity conditioning program, sometimes called a GPP (general physical preparedness program), that specifically addresses the Sick Aging Phenotype while fulfilling the requirement of comprehensive preparation for a broad range of power-capacity demands.
In HIIT, you engage in short bouts of very intense effort alternated with short periods of rest. On a stationary bike at moderate-high resistance, pedal as hard and fast as possible for 60 seconds. Rest or pedal lightly for 60 seconds. Repeat about 4 to 8 times. This approach has been studied extensively; the cardiovascular and performance adaptations produced by high-intensity training are similar, and in many cases superior, to those produced by continuous endurance training.
Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) — HIIT results in an elevated rate of oxygen consumption and energy utilization well after the training bout is over. This “extended burn” draws on the favored fuel for oxidative metabolism — triglyceride — and promotes fat loss. It is associated with restoring homeostasis in the muscle: repletion of energy stores, elimination of reaction products, repair of microtrauma, and adaptive responses.
Sleds are the ideal implement for HIIT, fulfilling all exercise prescription criteria. Sled-pushing is a low-impact, repetitive motor activity performed on a stable surface with no eccentric component, meaning no delayed soreness. Many report that concentric-only sled work actually helps dissipate soreness and improve recovery after heavy lower body work. There are anecdotal reports of strained calves and Achilles tendons from sprint work with loaded sleds — if this is a concern, simply walk the sled.
Sleds, especially Prowler-style sleds that accommodate standard barbell plates, have a wide therapeutic window and are subject to dosing manipulations via load, speed, distance, rest intervals, total volume, and frequency. Athletes can begin pushing an unloaded sled a short distance at a slow pace once a week, and work up to multiple sprints over longer distances with heavy loads and short rest intervals. Sled work can be done either “heavy and short” or “light and long” — optimal conditioning is likely best attained by a combination of both, perhaps alternated by session. Short sprints with heavy weight can be effective in as little as 10-yard increments. Longer sprints are typically 40 to 60 yards with lighter weights.
Sled drags are another terrific option. Like pushes, drags are concentric-only and do not produce soreness. Light sled drags are excellent for speeding recovery after heavy lower body work. Drags are not quite as intense as pushes and are typically done for total time (e.g., 15 to 20 minutes without stopping) or longer intervals (50 to 100 yards with brief rest). With light weights, drags allow for a very upright posture and long strides, extremely beneficial for hamstring development — useful for lifters who struggle with squat depth due to a weak posterior chain, allowing extra work without the heavy soreness that additional squatting and deadlifting might cause.
Rowers and bikes are both safe — low-impact, predominantly concentric exercises on stable surfaces. The lack of a foot-strike makes them excellent choices for trainees recovering from certain types of lower body injuries. Both have fairly wide therapeutic windows, with opportunities for manipulation of intensity, volume, and other variables similar to sleds. An easy way to begin is with simple 1-minute-on, 1-minute-off protocols for 10 to 15 total minutes.
The most useful feature of a treadmill is the ability to place the machine at an incline. It is most useful to utilize the degree of incline — not the speed — to manipulate the difficulty of the exercise.
Running and jogging do not meet the criteria of the exercise prescription and are not recommended. Although not particularly dangerous, they are high-impact exercises with prominent eccentric components, frequently performed outside on variable grades, and therefore not as safe as alternatives. They promote muscle soreness and fatigue that blunt recovery capacity. The negative orthopedic effects on the ankles, knees, and low back are unavoidable. Running and jogging are simple activities but hardly efficient — the health and performance adaptations they confer are also produced by HIIT protocols in a fraction of the time.
| Modality | Best Use | Trade-Offs for Masters |
|---|---|---|
| Sleds | Highest recommendation for HIIT; concentric-dominant work with broad dose control. | Requires equipment access and setup space. |
| Rowers & Bikes | Low-impact conditioning with easy interval control and joint-friendly progression. | Can become monotonous; less full-body loading than sled pushes. |
| Treadmills (incline focus) | Useful when speed is controlled and incline is used for progression. | Over-speed running raises impact and recovery cost. |
| Running/Jogging | May suit sport-specific preference outside general prescription goals. | Higher impact/eccentric load; poorer recovery fit for strength-focused Masters. |
| CrossFit | Potentially useful only with highly individualized coaching. | Standard fatigue-heavy templates often violate safety/recovery criteria. |
If you are a Master passionate about running or another long slow distance activity: that’s your sport, and that’s great. Lift weights and play your sport. You won’t get as strong as you could be, but you’ll be stronger, and you’ll do it better when you’re stronger. But running is not recommended as a conditioning component of the General Exercise Prescription.
Some CrossFit boxes are run by excellent coaches who understand how to modify protocols for Masters. In general, however, CrossFit does not meet the exercise prescription criteria. Masters have no business doing high-repetition deadlifting in a state of fatigue, high-repetition box jumps, or heavy snatches for time. Masters shouldn’t be using rings for dips or kipping their pull-ups. A highly individualized CrossFit program run by an experienced, careful coach might be appropriate for a few trainees in their 40s.
| Mon | Strength training |
| Tue | Rest |
| Wed | Strength training w/ light squat day, Conditioning (moderate-volume sled) |
| Thu | Rest |
| Fri | Strength training |
| Sat | Conditioning (high-volume sled) |
| Sun | Rest |
The benefit of walking is that it isn’t very stressful. The downside is that it isn’t very stressful. Walking is not particularly subject to volume manipulation for progression — just walking more often will be of limited value. Even for most novices, after several weeks of consistent daily walks it will no longer serve as an effective conditioning stimulus but rather as active rest. Increased levels of conditioning will only be achieved through more intense modalities.
Female athletes have less strength, neuromuscular efficiency, power production, and muscle mass than men, and have less upper body strength relative to lower body strength. On the other hand, they are able to perform multiple repetitions at a higher percentage of their 1RM, tend to recover faster, and can tolerate higher training frequency and volume overall. Many female Masters can use the programs in this book as written.
Life is not fair — the aging female loses muscle, bone, and strength at a greater rate than her male counterparts. In all cases, the fundamentals remain the same: regular training with a view to long-term progressive improvements in the General Fitness Attributes, proper performance of a small set of big multi-joint barbell exercises, assiduous attention to recovery factors, and proper record-keeping and analysis. Above all, athlete and coach must always bear in mind the underlying structure of any rational exercise prescription: the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle.