I just love love love it when I get thoughtful responses back from people who read my posts! Last week I got a great response back from a client concerning the article I wrote. If you haven’t read it you can check it out here:
My client asked mainly about two different things. He wanted to know about how and to what extent I individualize my programs and also how I program for people as they age into their 60’s and beyond. These are great questions and definitely ones that I know many people have. I thought I’d just let you know what I wrote back. Here it is:
Thanks for reading and the response! I appreciate it. I understand your concerns. I want to emphasize that I individualize all of my training programs. I do believe, though, that there are some movements that everyone needs to do in some way. Everyone needs to be able to perform some type of squat and some type of deadlift, for example. To be brief as to why, these are movements that emphasize basic movement patterns through the entire body that can help improve movement, posture, build muscle and through these things improve metabolism to help people look better and lose weight. Not everyone performs these movements, or any others, the same way but as we as a society become more and more sedentary, these movements become even more important for people to do correctly.
How I write my programs come from many different decisions and is expressed in different ways. I think about how someone can perform a movement, the order of the workout, what movements are emphasized among many other things. It may look like everyone is doing the same thing, after all every program I write comes from a “movement-first” philosophy, but there can be major differences from program to program.
It’s certainly true that I love lifting weights but one of the reasons that I advocate this for my clients is that I’ve seen people of all ages improve in so many ways because of it. As people age it becomes even more important as we face issues such as bone density, loss of muscle, and loss of mobility. I’ve seen people suffer relatively minor falls and get a multitude of very serious broken bones and other injuries because of poor bone density and strength. I’m sure you’ve had or have heard of elderly patients who have fallen and had to lay on their floor for hours or even days because they weren’t strong enough to pull themselves up off the floor.
As far as weight loss, losing weight requires us to increase our resting metabolism. This happens best when we increase our lean body mass. We actually don’t burn many calories when we exercise. It’s when we can raise our metabolism at rest that real weight loss occurs. As we age this does become more difficult due to many factors but that doesn’t make it impossible.
I hope this clarifies a few of the things I brought up in my last article. If you do have any questions about it please let me know.
As always, thanks for reading!
Mitch Rothbardt, CPT, PN Lean Eating Coach, FMS
2861 Grove Way in Castro Valley
510-754-7113
I Help People Discover Their Strength!
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