Okay you natural born couch potatoes this is your personal trainer speaking...
A 54 year old man set a world record of 24 pull ups in 24 hours while you all sat there like vegetables playing with your Xbox or internet surfing!
Note: This record may or may not have been officially broken but that is beside the point!
For years I have subscribed to a belief that muscles don't age that they just atrophy from a lack of use!
My oldest ever client was a 98 year old man that upon the first session I had with him I had to literally walk him out helping to brace him each step of the way to a seated bench where I used angled tubing exercises to reactivate the muscles!
About one month later he was pimp walking like George Jefferson "moving' on up" to the point that many of the top body builders at the Gold's Gym applauded me and him for the work he did consistently to get to that point!
And then one day he stopped showing up for the sessions so I called him... He told me that his doctor told him that he was too old to be working out at all! OUCH
I could have told him to tell that uninformed doctor to kick rocks and get back to the workout but rarely do I dare to overrule medical professionals who have a greater level authority over me if ever a client was to get injured due to me going around medical advice!
The doctor did not see his personal progress nor what I did to help get him to that point so ethically and legally I had to stand down and let the client decide for himself on his own!
Over the years I have had many elder clients and one lady in particular in her 70's was doing 8 plates on the leg press... That's 8 45 pound plates which equals 360 pounds and of course the leg press is more leveraged than say the barbell squat!
Most of my strongest clients at the Results gym at that time like John K (Ren and Stimpy) and Peter Schink my editor were each ding reps with 8 plates on each side (720 pounds) and were among the strongest clients even when UFC and other MMA fighters were coming through doing much less!
The common theme among my clients was that due to certain power lifting based exercises was that their bone density increased according to their doctor reports!
I was known for leading middle aged and elder clients to the promised land of leaner body mass and never did I have them do any exercises that were considered high risk since the leg press has a less degree of injury rate than most other fitness apparatuses!
If you could not control the resistance I would not let you attempt such a lift but the key to that is not actually controlling the weight but the movement of the exercise around the joint which controls the weight by default!
I once had a female athlete back in Chicago who did 8 plates on each side and eventually we became more workout partners than trainer/client... She was also left handed and we killed people in doubles racquetball games because our opponents often never noticed that she was a lefty and kept serving to her forehand! Lol
I myself have done 12 plates on the leg press which usually requires one of those special custom apparatuses found mostly in body building type gyms like muscle beach!
If you understand biomechanics and to what degree of angles you should properly take a joint under resistance then exercise can be safe, fit and fun... If you go beyond the range of motion that a joint or muscle should go under resistance it can lead to contradictions that harm the integrity of your musculoskeletal system!
I have seen many exercises done improperly over the years and if you could x-ray what is happening underneath the skin tissue you would see the beginning of the deterioration in process!
Having a wife who is an occupational therapist that works with injuries as well as the elderly I have witnessed first hand what can happen to someone who either works out disastrously or slips into couch potato mode as they age!
Use it or lose it...
I had an elderly client that agreed he was aging too fast and went all genome on me saying that his DNA could not reverse his rapid decline to which I responded that the water and protein that makes up his muscles was technically "renewable energy" and it was his choice of hypertrophy or atrophy!
This guy was an engineer that had built some parts for spacecraft on the moon and had all types of credentials but what I said stopped him in his tracks like I was smoking that good weed and not sharing with him! Lol
Suppose a 100 year old man won the 100 meter dash at the Olympics with a world record just because... Science would tell you that no one defeats "Father Time" but if he did accomplish that it changes everything!
Science can make many assumptions but once those assumptions are overruled by a particular action you have to make halftime adjustments even when you don't want to!
Most people accept age as a natural occurrence but some defy it by seeking various fountain of youth methods like Botox, plastic surgery or cryogenically freezing themselves until better medicinal methods catch up to what they want to appear like in the future!
Of course then there are steroids and HGH but that is temporary and comes with too many side effects!
Also world class athletes can be misleading because of the wear and tear associated with performing at such high levels in the prime of their youth... This is probably why so many many former super star athletes get fat after retirement as they associate working out with too much pain!
Now before you go grab grandma up out her rocking chair you have to remember that seriously atrophied muscles can be too brittle for immediate workout but while she is seated she can do isometric exercises just to get the blood back flowing regularly to those cobwebbed muscles!
Take it slow at first and build up over time which you have plenty of and remember that it rarely happens overnight... However, I did train a young woman that was getting married soon back then and wanted to at least do one push up to show her fiancé who challenged her and the first session I had her do 15 just by showing her a leverage technique that made them easier!
Note: On push ups push across instead of up so that it activates the pectoral muscles which is a prime mover where as the standard method places more stress on the triceps which is a much smaller muscle... And also tighten the torso muscles and leg muscles down to the ankle by squeezing them so that they stabilize the mid section and assist in the movement by not dragging you down with gravitational pullings!
I will cover these topics and many more in the issues of Flex Hectic available on the Apple iBooks app along with answering sports specific questions related to each chapter!
If you have any questions about fitness or what types of exercises to do I'm more than happy to overthrow the industry by debunking all the "Gym Science" out there...
P.S. In the event that that 54 year old world record holder is found to be on steroids or any other PED's the theory of muscles don't age still applies because he is not the only elder person working out!
Flex Hectic
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