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Workouts for Seniors and Older Adults

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Age is just a number, isn’t it? As you age, your joints and muscles become more brittle and more prone to injury. What’s the best course of action? Exercise of course! In this article I’ll go over the common issues you’ll have as you age and the best workouts to help improve mobility and overall strength. Just because you’re aging doesn’t mean you have to feel like it either!

Exercise (and movement in general) will help lubricate your joints and help with joint-related pain. As you age, cartilage changes in your joints.

What is cartilage and why do I care?

Cartilage is the connection tissue used for joints. Without cartilage, your joints would be bone to bone and be very painful. Cartilage is made up of synovial fluid and water. As you add load to a joint (let’s say your knees during a back squat), the fluid stored within cartilage is redistributed as to cushion the weight (as you lower and raise the barbell). This helps “soften the blow” and allows more fluid (hehe) movement.

With such diseases like osteoarthritis, the cartilage can be completely broken down and your joints rub bone to bone, making movement very painful.

While not conclusive, it has been show that regular exercise can reduce the overall damage to cartilage in a lifetime. This gives to the saying “motion is lotion”.

Common Problems Among Older Exercising Adults and How to Fix Them

Think about all the movements you perform in a normal day. Getting up, lying down, stepping up, placing items on a shelf. The most common pain in older adults is usually knee and shoulder. And guess what? You use those joints the most.

Let’s start with the knee first.

Knee Issues

First and foremost lets start with your legs. You’re going to use your legs the most in daily life, so you better protect them now before they get worse.

Generally speaking, most people use their quadriceps more so than their hamstrings because, well, it’s easy and the most convenient. If you’ve ever barbell squatted and have knee pain, chances are you’re not engaging your hamstrings.

When you’re not engaging your hamstrings, all the lifting is done with your quadriceps instead of splitting the load with the other muscles in your legs

If knee pain is going to happen, think about investing into knee wraps. They provide constant support and stability.

Shoulder Issues

Next to your knees, your shoulders are secondly used the most. From lifting to rotating, your shoulders do a lot more work than you think. Strengthening the muscles around the shoulder (similar to strengthening the hamstrings to take the load off of the quadriceps) help easy the pain and take the load off that the shoulder is carrying.

Unfortunately, if you have osteoarthritis there’s not much you can do other than try to regain some flexibility in your shoulders. With osteoarthritis, the cartilage wears down protecting the joints and can cause immense pain.

If shoulder pain is due to flexibility or rotator cuff damage, there are some remedies available. Strengthening the muscles around your shoulder as mentioned, such as your rear deltoid muscle and your upper trapezoid muscle can increase stability until you can add a load to your shoulders.

At Home Workouts for Seniors

Not everyone has the time or money to visit a gym. Having said that, it doesn’t mean you can’t get a good workout in. Latex resistance bands are an excellent alternative to visiting the gym and perfect for rehabilitation work.

These are the bands I use, I wrote a review about them HERE.

Band pull aparts are one of my go-to warm ups for mostly everything upper body. Easy to do and a good stretch before jumping into things.

Assuming you have a gym membership, here are low-impact workouts to help protect your joints and strengthen your muscles.

Leg Workouts for Seniors

Warmup

  • Walking Lunge (use dumbells or kettlebells for added difficulty)
  • Glute bridge walkouts for hamstring stretching
  • Glute bridge for glute stretching prior to lifting
  • Light incline on a treadmill

Workout

  • Horizontal Leg Press – 3 sets of 12-15 reps
  • Lying hamstring curl machine – 3-4 sets of 12-15 reps
  • Leg Abductor machine – 3 sets of 12-15 reps (highly recommended to maintain hip motion)
  • Kettlebell swings – 2-3 sets of 12 reps

Upper Body Workouts for Seniors

Warmup

  • Resistance band pull aparts
  • Childs pose (yoga)
  • Scarecrow rotator cuff warmup

Workout

  • Chest flyes using cables – 2-3 sets of 12 reps
  • Rope facepulls – 3 sets of 15 reps (highly recommended)
  • Dumbbell row on incline bench – 3 sets of 12-15
  • Barbell bicep curl – 2-3 sets of 12 reps
  • Seated dumbbell shoulder press – 2-3 sets of 12-15 reps (use light weight here!)
  • Dumbbell shrugs

If you start now, you can help strengthen your joints to ease the pain in the future. Generally, use a light weight so you can complete all reps and sets of the exercises. As with any shoulder injury, the last thing you want to do is make it worse.


Best Tricep Stretches For The Gym To Avoid Injury

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We’ve all been there: you get so pumped up going to the gym you don’t properly stretch and you end up injuring yourself. You say “next time I’ll stretch more!”. But you don’t.

Chances are if you’re working your triceps, you’re moving some heavy ass weight. And when you injure yourself moving heavy ass weight, the results aren’t good. Stretching your muscles prior to warm-up is crucial in preventing injury, increasing range of motion and mental focus. Start your workout with these easy and effective tricep stretches.

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Your Guide To Upper Body Bodyweight Exercises

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You’re at home with no equipment and you want to work out; what do you do? No matter where you are, bodyweight workouts are your best friend. Today  I’ll go over the best upper body bodyweight exercises so you can still get a pump in when you’re away from the gym.

 

Bodyweight exercises also can be classified as callisthenics, are exercises that use your own bodyweight. Meaning no external equipment, just you and your limbs. While you’re not going to look like Arnold after doing a few sets of dips, it’s still going to stimulate your muscles.

 

Bodyweight exercises can be performed anywhere, whether you’re travelling or just sitting at home. Since these exercises require no tools or equipment, you can increase the difficulty easily depending on your skill level.

 

Chest

 

Gold standard: Push ups

 

Push ups are the go-to exercise to working your chest with no equipment. Like the bench press, push ups work your shoulders, triceps and chest muscles.

 

Tips: Keep your legs straight and brace your core. Your body should be tight and rigid, don’t lose form as you complete a push up!

 

Variation: Stretch Push Ups

 

Stretch push ups are a modified push up with an increased range of motion. Start by getting yourself in a normal push up position. Now put your hands away from your body, approximately one foot from where your hands would normally be. Another way to perform a stretch push up is by having your hands elevated.

You can see that from the start the stretch push up puts tension on your chest. From the stretched position, you stretch out your chest, even more, recruiting more muscle fibers.

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What are Rack Pulls and How Effective Are They? Gain Back Mass

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Lower back exercises are constantly neglected, so you end up with a weak back because you don’t do any. How do you fix it? Rack pulls are the answer.

What The Hell Are Rack Pulls?

You’ve probably seen guys do rack pulls at the gym but you may have thought they were doing barbells rows funny. I don’t find it’s a very popular exercise in of itself, but it’s definitely effective.

In short, rack pulls are a modified deadlift with a limited range of motion.

Rack pulls are performed in a rack (duh). The bar is set on the safety guides at about knee height, depending on how deep you want the range of motion.

Rack pulls are effective at really working your lower back since you’re not limited by leg strength like deadlifts. This way you can target your lower optimally, without relying on your quads or hamstrings.

How Are Rack Pulls Different Than Deadlifts?

When you deadlift, whatever grip it may be, the bar is set on the ground. In some instances, you can step on a platform or plate to increase the range of motion of the deadlift.

As you straighten up with a deadlift you metaphorically push your feet through the floor, using the strength of your legs and back to raise the weight.

Now for rack pulls, the barbell is resting on the safety guides of the rack. For most, the safety is set to around knee height. If it’s too low, you’re just doing a deadlift and if it’s too high, the range of motion will be too short.

Just like a deadlift, you want to hinge your hips as you complete the exercise. Since your legs will be left out of the equation, your lower back will be constantly worked during the exercise.

Since the range of motion is shortened, you can overload the weight on rack pulls. Having said that, if you have a sensitive or weak lower back, this will be the last thing you want to do. Warm up with a lighter exercise such as hyperextensions, with or without additional weight, before you jump into rack pulls. This will reduce the chance of injury by literally warming up the muscle.

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The Best Damn Feeder Workouts for Chest

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It’s 2018, have you heard of Feeder workouts? If not you’re missing out on the best damn way to grow your chest!

Feeder workouts work, and and it was the main method of Rich Piana’s workouts. But if you’re new to this concept what the hell are Feeder workouts?

 

 

What Are Feeder Workouts?

This is an excerpt from the original article The Truth About Rich Piana’s Feeder Workouts

The idea behind a feeder workout is that you are going to pump your muscle like crazy with high repetitions.

This will then force blood, oxygen, and other nutrients into the muscle thus ‘feeding’ the muscle.

When performing a feeder workout you use very light weight, very minimal rest, and focus entirely on the pump.

What’s the point of a feeder workout?

Good question! The point is to grow your muscle.

“BUT DON’T I NEED SUPER HIGH WEIGHT TO GROW MY MUSCLES?”

Not entirely true! Like always there are many different philosophies and we’ll dive into the reasoning behind this and why it actually works.

So you pump, pump and pump up your muscle full of blood for ultimate muscle growth. You can hit your chest with heavy ass weight for years on end and get no growth. What most guys do is throw some plates on the on the bar, bench some ungodly weight and pat themselves on the back.

You can’t just simply move the weight and expect a huge barrel chest!

One of the core concepts in bodybuilding is the mind-muscle connection. You have to really think about how your muscle feels during the exercise. By creating a strong mind-muscle connection, you can distinguish different muscles easier. This will allow you to really target the muscle group you’re after, whether it be your chest, arms or legs.

It wasn’t until I started hitting my chest with tons of volume that I noticed growth

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