Unlocking the Secrets to Aging Gracefully

Aging is an inevitable part of life, but it doesn't mean we must surrender to its effects without a fight. We have a choice in how we age; one powerful way to make that choice is through functional training. 

In this blog post, we'll define functional training and review its importance in mitigating the physiological effects of aging and how it can help you maintain the energy and vitality of someone years younger. Whether you're new to the concept of muscle fitness or looking to enhance your existing routine, this guide will provide valuable insights into aging gracefully.

What is functional training?

As we journey through the inevitable aging process, we face a crucial decision: 

1) accept it and let nature take its course, or 

2) fight it. 

The right exercise program can be a formidable ally in the battle against aging. It can deliver numerous benefits that minimize the physical toll of aging, allowing us to maintain the vigor and vitality of our younger selves. And functional training plays a role. Functional training is a type of exercise designed to train the body for activities of daily living. 

The functional training approach

Functional training is evolving, and exercising as we age can empower us with the strength and energy needed to fully enjoy life's activities and prepare for a healthier future. Instead of obsessing over the mirror and the scale, it's time to prioritize overall physical fitness. Every workout can be a magic pill that extends your life's length and quality.

To help make it easier for you to get started with functional training, we’ve included links to some of our favorite tools and equipment. 

1. Mobility and Flexibility Training - Mobility and flexibility training focus on coordinating body movements through space. This helps prevent common musculoskeletal injuries associated with aging, such as sore knees, aching backs, and general discomfort. By incorporating mobility training, you'll keep your muscles and joints healthy and mobile, paving the way for an active lifestyle as you age.

2. Strength and Power Training - Aging often leads to muscle mass loss and decreased functional muscle capacity. Strength training is the key to combating this age-related muscle atrophy. Additionally, power training enhances your muscle's ability to generate force quickly, which is essential for daily activities and preventing falls. Both strength and power are crucial for healthy aging.

Foundational Movement Patterns 

There are six foundational patterns of movement for mobility training and strength/power training. Whether doing mobility training or strength/power training, focus on these principal movement types:

• Hip Hinge – Hinge at the hip with both feet planted. The movement begins from the hip and has little involvement from the knees. Think of picking up a large empty box from the floor and bending from the hip instead of at the knees.

• Squat – both feet planted, movement begins at the hips but includes bending and straightening the knees. Think of lifting a box up off the floor with your legs.

• Single Leg patterns – It could mean exercises balancing on one leg at a time or having one foot in front of the other but still shoulder distance apart. Many lower body exercises can be done from this stance.

• Push – Pushing an object away from your body – either forward or overhead. Think of a plank, bench press, or pushup.

• Pull – Pulling an object towards you – either forward or overhead. Think of a pull-up or tug-of-war.

• Rotation – Rotation movements combine pulling and pushing motions involving both upper and lower body segments, where the pelvis rotates. Think of the action of chopping wood or an overhand serve in tennis, where your arms or upper body cross the plane of the front of the body.

Start Your Journey with Mobility Training

Incorporating these movement patterns into your training regimen is essential for achieving a well-rounded and functional capacity as you age.

Begin your fitness journey by prioritizing mobility training. This foundational step ensures you develop balanced physical abilities and functional capacity, setting the stage for a healthier and more active life as you age.

Mobility training should be a fundamental part of your routine, encompassing activities like stretching and connective tissue work with tools such as foam rollers, therapy balls, stability balls, and therapy bands. Three effective approaches to integrating mobility training into your regimen are bedtime stretches, Pilates, gentle yoga, and incorporating the use of props. These practices enhance mobility and provide a dual benefit by simultaneously strengthening your body. Whether you're new to exercise or an experienced enthusiast, these methods suit everyone.

Consistency matters. Even when a full workout seems daunting, allocating some time to mobility work, especially through stretching, is crucial. This effort contributes to preserving your muscles' and joints' health and flexibility. You'll be surprised at how spending as little as 15 minutes each day or incorporating brief stretch breaks into your daily routine can significantly affect your movement patterns and overall physical skills. Journaling your activity and scheduling it into your calendar is an excellent way to help you kickstart a new behavior. 

Once you've established a solid foundation in mobility, it's time to incorporate strength and power training.

Level up with Strength and Power Training

After establishing a solid foundation in mobility, it's time to take your fitness journey to the next level by introducing strength and power training into your routine.

Unleash the Benefits of Strength Training: Strength training offers many advantages, especially for midlife women. Notably, the results become apparent relatively quickly, with nearly any exercise involving weights or just your body weight leading to noticeable improvements in strength. The beauty of strength training lies in its versatility, providing you with a diverse range of workout options to keep your routine fresh and engaging.

Crafting Your Strength Routine: Begin your strength journey by incorporating strengthening exercises into your routine at least twice a week. Gradually, as your strength improves, consider increasing your training frequency to three or four sessions per week. You can kickstart your journey with bodyweight exercises. Still, as you progress, you may want to use various equipment like dumbbells, resistance bands, gym machines, or even barbells and heavier weights.

Dive into Specific Strength Patterns: For midlife women, it's crucial to include specific strength patterns in your training regimen. You can either integrate some of these patterns into each workout session or dedicate specific days to focus on each pattern individually. This adaptability ensures that you can maintain high motivation levels and continually challenge yourself as you become a healthier and stronger version of yourself.

• Unilateral Training: Unilateral training involves using only one arm or leg during an exercise. This type of training enhances the strength of the specific limb being worked and has an interesting side effect: research indicates that it can boost the strength of the opposite limb. Additionally, unilateral training contributes to core strength, stabilizing the spine and pelvis. This helps prevent muscle imbalances and enhances overall stability, vital for maintaining a healthy body as we age. The rationale behind this approach is rooted in the fact that many of our daily movements primarily engage one arm or leg at a time. Unilateral training exercises are often performed using dumbbells or kettlebells.

• Resistance Training: While all the discussed exercises contribute to strength improvement, resistance training takes a more intense approach. It focuses on using heavier weights and simultaneously engages the entire body or both limbs. For example, exercises like squatting with a weighted bar or performing bench presses fall under this category. The primary objective of resistance training is to develop the capability to lift heavier objects, thereby increasing overall strength. To achieve this goal, working with heavier weights is essential.

• Power Training: Power training is an often overlooked aspect of fitness, particularly for midlife women. Our bodies contain different muscle fibers, including slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for explosive movements and are critical in enhancing the resilience of elastic tissues and ligaments. These areas are commonly associated with injuries and muscle strains. Unfortunately, age-related muscle loss often leads to a decline in fast-twitch fibers. These fibers are essential for preventing falls or reacting quickly, such as jumping out of obstacles or even leaping over small obstacles like puddles. Incorporating explosive movements into your routine can stimulate the development of these fast-twitch muscle fibers. Starting with small activities like brief bouts of skipping, hopping from one foot to the other, or even hopscotch can be an excellent starting point. Gradually progress to more challenging activities, such as jumping onto a box or platform or engaging in medicine ball slams or throws, possibly with a workout partner. Incorporating power training can enhance your ability to react swiftly and effectively, which is especially valuable as you age.

The Importance of Muscle Fitness

Just as aerobic exercise enhances heart health, muscle fitness exercises strengthen and improve skeletal muscles, enhancing your ability to move. Studies show that adults who engage in twice-weekly strength training reduce their mortality risk. Beyond health benefits, functional training adds quality to your years, ensuring you can enjoy your favorite activities for longer.

Aging may be inevitable, but how we age is within our control. Embrace functional training as a powerful tool to age gracefully, maintain vitality, and enjoy life fully. Incorporating mobility, strength, and power training into your routine will unlock the secrets to healthy aging. 

For more information and sample exercises, check out "Ageless Intensity" by Pete McCall, a valuable resource on this transformative journey. Embrace the 'silver bullet' of movement and enhance your cognitive function while adding quality to your years.

Eleven Reasons Strength Training in Midlife Improves Health

Your body is a gift. Every fiber of your body — each of the eleven elements that comprise your body — has carried you through your life. Your body held hands, loved others, gave hugs, perhaps birthed babies, and cared for others. 

Indeed, it has sometimes betrayed us, become ill, suffered broken bones, endured surgeries, and as we age, has begun to creak and groan. For some, it may not move at all or how we want it to. But, your body is a gift, and moving it can be a reminder that we do so because we can.

For all but a few, our body doesn’t look the same in midlife as it did two to three decades ago. Yes, it’s ok to reminisce about that 30-year-old body, but rather than compare the current body to its younger version, be grateful for how far it has brought you in this life and for the journey still ahead. 

Movement helps a body adapt, grow, heal, and stay healthy. Just watch a baby, toddler, or young child, and you know this is true. Movement helps prevent and repair injuries. 

Your body is also the thing that can prevent you from having the quality of life you desire in your older years. With few exceptions, the better you treat your body - the more movement you give it - the better it will treat you. 

It is never too late to start. Be good to your body, and it will be good to you.

Focus now on how to move your body to stay strong and enable you to do the things you want. Think about the events or experiences our parents or grandparents didn’t get to enjoy at our age. 

How do you know what movement your body needs? Try this reflection exercise. Close your eyes for five minutes and imagine what you want to be doing in your 90s. Yes, your 90s; if you have great genes or can life hack your way towards being a centenarian, what do you want to have the capability of doing? Next, think about what you need to do in your 60s, 70s, and 80s to live out that dream? 

Chances are high that everyone imagined a life full of movement and strength rather than one where they’re sitting in an armchair watching tv or in a rocking chair on the porch watching the world pass by. Consider whatever visualization you had of your future fit and healthy self to be your version of winning the gold medal at the centenarian Olympics. And, everyone knows if you want to make it to the Olympics, you have to train for it. 

The only way to have a high quality of life is to maintain a strong and active body. If you don’t feel that is your body today, then it’s time to train to get the strong body you deserve and to have the one you need. What do you physically need to do now to have the physical life you want later?

How do you do that? You move. You train your muscles. Your muscles will adapt and grow stronger. Yes, cardiovascular fitness (aerobic) and physical activity are essential, but most women focus too much on those exercises and neglect strength training. If you love your cardio workouts, you can always combine more muscle strengthening exercises into your cardio routine. 

Strength training is one of the cornerstone things women can do to improve their health span to live vibrantly and energetically for as long as possible. As we age, the body declines first, then disease begins. The best way to offset illness is to prevent the body from deteriorating. And the best way to do that is to maintain muscle mass. 

Many things happen when you start doing resistance training, weight lifting, or even bodyweight exercises to strengthen your muscles. 

You will:

• Increase stability and balance, which helps you better control your body in space.

• Experience better bone health. After age 65, the risk of death within one year of breaking a hip or femur during a fall is 30-40 percent.

• Change your metabolism, helping to prevent metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes).

• Manage weight because you’ll burn more calories as your body composition changes. 

• Move throughout your day more easily. Lifting heavier items, climbing stairs, bending over, and getting up from the floor will all go more smoothly.

• Stave off the frailty that comes with age. Falls due to a lack of muscle mass are almost entirely the cause of accidents and death after the age of 75

• Increase joint mobility and decrease non-arthritic joint pain, which prevents injuries,

• Have greater independence, so you tire less quickly and can do more physical things.

• Improve appearance. Most women appreciate their appearance more after starting a strength training program. Improved muscle tone smoothes skin.

• Have the energy you desire to move through your day doing the things you dream of doing. 

• Improve your mood, and overall just feel better! 

Now is the time to be your best kick-ass self and flourish after 50. 

As you strength train, it’s also important to ensure you eat enough protein. Check out our 90-Day Protein Journal for a guided tool to help you build a new daily habit that sticks!

Check out other blog posts from Rumblings Media on becoming fitter and physically active in midlife. 

Together we Rumble!