Body by Science<\/a>.<\/p>\nHigh Intensity Weight Training for Seniors<\/h2>\n
On the subject of exercise requirements, senior citizens need to let go of the idea that somehow they’re different from the rest of the population because of their age.<\/p>\n
Being older doesn’t change much of anything on that front.<\/p>\n
All the physiological mechanisms necessary for the human body to produce a physiological adaptation to the exercise stimulus remain intact through every stage of life.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe only meaningful difference that pertains from a physiological standpoint with regard to older people versus younger people is that the older population has had more time for the deconditioning process to do its damage.<\/p>\n
They have dug a deeper decompensatory hole, metabolically speaking, than the average younger person who is embarking on a resistance-training program.<\/p>\n
Consider the physiological constitution of the average thirty-five-year old man<\/strong> who has never trained with weights.<\/p>\nHe is right at the threshold where he will spontaneously start to lose a significant amount of lean mass unless an appropriate muscle-strengthening stimulus intervenes.<\/strong><\/p>\nA similar situation occurred with the average seventy-year-old man<\/strong> when he was thirty-five – but has continued unchecked for the ensuing thirty-live years.<\/p>\nThe senior citizen is starting from a point of worsened muscular condition because he has allowed the process of degradation (or atrophy) of his muscular system to take place without remedy for a much longer time.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, for both individuals, the remedy and the physiological mechanism that needs to be engaged to reverse the process of atrophy are the same.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe precautions that need to be taken in training are also the same for any member of the population\u2014though with seniors, strict adherence is essential.<\/p>\n
This mandates that seniors perform biomechanically correct exercise through a full range of motion that is tolerated by the body<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAlso, the exercise must be done in a way that properly tracks muscle and joint function. Most important, any exercise must be performed in a manner that properly controls the forces brought to bear on muscles, joints, and connective tissues so that the chances of injury are obviated as much as possible.<\/p>\n
Again, all of the guidelines that apply to younger people and exercise also apply to seniors, only more so.<\/strong><\/p>\nIn general, the only time it’s necessary to modify a given training program is when a client (and this again applies across the board) has an injury or a condition such as arthritis that might call for limiting the range of motion initially. This might mean changing the machine setup to a minor extent, but in terms of how we apply the exercise protocol, there is not (nor should there be) any difference.<\/p>\n
THE BENEFITS OF STRENGTH FOR SENIORS<\/h2>\n
The benefits attainable from strength training are even more compelling for senior citizens than for others,<\/strong> just by virtue of the fact that seniors have so much more that they can gain back.<\/p>\nIn case after case, when a proper training stimulus is applied to the physiology of elderly people, the rate at which they strengthen is astounding. It doesn’t take a lot of stimulus for them to get back to a normal baseline, because their muscles have, in effect, been lying dormant, desperate for a stimulus to awaken and reactivate them.<\/p>\n
It is not uncommon to see a doubling of strength (yes, a 100 percent increase) in as little as six to twelve weeks<\/strong>.<\/p>\nThis is the metabolic equivalent of “coming back from the dead” in terms of how much a person’s body\u2014and vitality\u2014can change.<\/p>\n
Studies have revealed that, for seniors, a proper strength-training program can produce the following changes in the muscle and in the health benefits that attend having more muscle:<\/p>\n
\n- Regained muscle strength and function<\/li>\n
- Increased muscle strength and muscle size in senior men and women, including nursing home residents<\/li>\n
- Enhanced walking endurance<\/li>\n
- Reduced body fat levels<\/li>\n
- Increased metabolic rate<\/li>\n
- Reduced resting blood pressure<\/li>\n
- Improved blood lipid profiles<\/li>\n
- Increased gastrointestinal transit speed<\/li>\n
- Alleviated low-back pain<\/li>\n
- Increased bone mineral density<\/li>\n
- Eased arthritic discomfort<\/li>\n
- Relieved depression<\/li>\n
- Improved coronary performance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
THE EXOTHERMIC BENEFIT OF MUSCLE<\/h2>\n
Another important consideration for seniors is that muscle regulates body temperature.<\/p>\n
The body is supposed to maintain an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees, but as people lose muscle over the years, they also lose the heat that muscle provides. As a result, they tend to become more vulnerable to both hot and cold, which causes unhealthful fluctuations in body temperature.<\/p>\n
This condition can be a serious problem with elderly people, particularly it they become sick.<\/p>\n
Doctors know that most people who get pneumonia or a urinary tract infection will develop a fever, but not elderly patients. More often than not, the elderly patient under such circumstances is hypothermic.<\/p>\n
The reason is that muscle generates considerable heat, because the metabolic activity of the body, as with all energy activity that is governed by thermodynamics, is exothermic, meaning that it produces heat.<\/p>\n
In a car, for instance, the engine produces significant amounts of heat. That’s why car manufacturers install radiators. Remember the first law of thermodynamics, which says, in effect, that you can’t get something for nothing.<\/p>\n
Energy always has to be inputted into the system.<\/p>\n
The second law of thermodynamics says, in effect, that you can never break even.<\/strong><\/p>\nThis means that as energy is being converted, it is always wasted external to the system. This is precisely how body heat is produced; it is the product of the mechanical inefficiency of energy consumed by muscle tissue.<\/p>\n
If your body doesn’t have an adequate supply of muscle tissue, you will not produce enough heat so that the excess can be used to maintain your body’s temperature.<\/p>\n
Most people don’t realize how vulnerable elderly people are to hypothermia. An elderly person who happens to slip and fall in the shower and is not discovered for several hours is as likely to die from hypothermia as from any other consequence of the fall.<\/p>\n
The Ideal Training Program for Seniors<\/h2>\n
Muscle, we repeat, is a vital protective tissue for the elderly population.<\/p>\n
The more of it, the better. The dozen-plus benefits listed in the preceding section are not so much direct effects of strength training as they are indirect effects that evolve as the body produces or restores more muscle.<\/p>\n
\n- In the case of arthritis,<\/strong> an arthritic joint is going to move more efficiently if a strong muscle is controlling it, rather than a weak muscle.<\/li>\n
- With regard to osteoporosis<\/strong>, studies show a benefit from strength training among seniors when the weight is significant: 75 to 80 percent of a subject’s one-rep maximum. Anything less than this will probably be insufficient load to stimulate the body to make changes in bone mineral density.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
With senior citizens, as with everyone else, a proper strength-training program must use a meaningful load and attempts should always be made to progress that load as the trainee’s strength increases over time. <\/strong><\/p>\nThis is why the approach of most fitness professionals to treat senior citizens as though they were pieces of fine porcelain is detrimental.<\/p>\n
Yes, caution must be exercised with the senior trainee.<\/p>\n
Care must be taken in the way the exercise is administered, such as in the control of movement speed and the diminishing of momentum, so that forces into joints are controlled\u2014but this is true of all trainees.<\/p>\n
Trainees and trainers can’t be namby-pamby about selecting weights or allowing tor exertion of energy. If a “toned-down” approach is employed, the roster of benefits either will be diminished or will not be forthcoming’ at all.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nMEDICINAL IMPACT<\/h2>\n
Strength training is the best preventive medicine in which a human being can engage.<\/strong><\/p>\nIn many instances, senior citizens are being medicated to improve those listed biomarkers of health, never having been told that it is fully within their power to achieve these same effects through proper resistance training.<\/strong><\/p>\nMany of the metabolic benefits that increase in tandem with an increase in muscle can obviate the need tor the medications that seniors commonly ingest to treat the symptoms of such complications as high (or low) blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.<\/p>\n
Seniors (or anyone else) who engage in a proper strength-training program and who are on medication to treat the symptoms of such conditions as diabetes should be closely monitored, as their medication may well have to be reduced.<\/p>\n
If, for instance, a senior with non-insulin-dependent diabetes is prescribed oral hypoglycemics, when the glycogen mobilization cascade occurs during workouts, insulin sensitivity will improve significantly along with gains in strength and muscle mass.<\/p>\n
The consequence of dosing an oral hypoglycemic agent that is just adequate for the senior at one point is that six to twelve weeks into a strength-training program, the improvement in insulin sensitivity may cause the blood sugar to fall too low.<\/strong><\/p>\nA similar situation exists tor blood pressure medication.<\/strong><\/p>\n