A fitness coach breaks down why lifting heavy matters as you age, and how to progress safely without injury. He argues intensity beats volume, and shows how to scale weight to your actual strength, not your age.
A fitness coach breaks down why lifting heavy matters as you age, and how to progress safely without injury. He argues intensity beats volume, and shows how to scale weight to your actual strength, not your age.
For those of you in your 40s, 50s and beyond, like me, what I want to share is that we sometimes hear on social media, from trainers or from other experts that you've got to lift heavy to change your body. You've got to lift heavy to build muscle. We want to build muscle because the more muscle we have, the more calories you burn at rest. The more functional our body works, the slimmer we look because muscle takes up less space, space than fat. However, you don't have to lift heavy. And especially as we age and we have more injuries, pain and inflammation, we're concerned about lifting heavy. So here's you can do instead. I want you to focus on progression and intensity. What does that mean? What that means is, are you progressing your moves, are you making them more challenging for you every time that you work out? And as far as intensity, that doesn't mean comparing to a sprinter or an Olympic athlete and saying, oh, wow, they're intense. I've got to be that intense. I want you to look at what's intense for you, what's challenging for you. Take for example, working towards a chin up. Somebody might be able to do 20 of them.
