Hi guys! I was sent a very interesting question the other day via email from somebody who is a
runner. He's an older runner - he's about 70 years old - and he wants to do strength
training to prevent injuries, and his question was: Is there anything with regards to age that
he's going to keep in mind when he thinks about strength training - frequency, weights you use,
reps you you do, etcetera. Now, the short answer to that is: No, age is not the thing you've got
to think about. But in this video I'm going to talk about, first of all, what is the main thing
that determines how often you should do those things, and then secondly, how age can influence
your strength training, and some tips on how to kind of optimise that. So, for those of you who
don't know me, my name is Maryke. I'm one of the physiotherapists from sports-injury-physio.com,
where you can get online physiotherapy assessment as well as treatment for your running injuries or,
to be honest, any sports injury. So, if that's something you're interested in, have
a look at ... the link of our website is in the description of this video. Okay, so if I'm saying
that age is not the main thing that determines how often you should be strength training or what
weights you use, then what is? Well, it's training status. And when we look at training status,
both your long-term training status as well as your short-term training status play a role.
So, let me explain this in more detail. Long-term training status means for how many years have you
been doing strength training. So, with every year, with every month, with every day that you strength
train, you add strength to your tissue, and if you've done that consistently for several years,
you'll have much stronger tissue that can handle much heavier weights and that recover more quickly
after a session than somebody who's just started. So, when we think of long-term training status,
somebody who's used to strength training will likely benefit from using heavier weights,
so weights that make you tired within eight to ten repetitions. If you do lighter weights than that,
you may not see much of a training effect. You may also benefit from doing ... three sessions
of training - strength training - per week for a muscle group. But to be honest, that will depend
a little bit on the other training you do as well - whether you get enough recovery time.
Somebody who's new to strength training, on the other hand, will require more recovery,
so definitely just two strength training sessions per week. Now, when I say two strength training
sessions per week, that's per muscle group. So, you could do two sessions for your legs but two
different sessions for your core, for instance, because it's not the same muscles you work.
Also, it's usually best because your tissue hasn't had a history of consistent strength training,
to start with lighter weights, so weights that make you tired within about 12 to 15 repetitions.
So, you'll be doing more repetitions in your three sets, or how many sets you do, versus
somebody who's using heavier weights ... and who's used to strength training. It's often also ... if
you're only about to start with strength training, then it's useful to start with body weight only
and first conquer those exercises and get them up to where you can do three sets of 12 to 15
before you start adding weights to them. So, that's what long-term training status means - how
that can influence you. Now, short-term training status is what you've done in the last couple of
weeks, three to four weeks, and that has an effect on everybody, no matter how many years you've been
training for. Because if you have a break from ... from training for about two weeks or longer,
your tissue starts to lose some of its strength. So, say for instance it's holiday period
and you don't really strength train - you do fun things outside, also active things,
but just not heavy strength training like what you're used to. If you then come back to it and
you try to go back to the intensities you used to do, your tissue may not be strong enough for that,
and you can actually end up with an injury. So, if you've had a break for more than two weeks,
it's good to just ease back into strength training. Now, the longer the break was,
the more gradual you've got to ... the more you've got to reduce that intensity to start with and the
more gradual you've got to build it up again. If it's just been a couple of weeks, then a week or
two of gradual build-up will be more than enough. So, that's something to keep in mind. OK, but,
age can have an effect on how easily you build muscle and also how well you recover.
Now, I think most people know about women going through the change as we get older, and that's
because it's quite easy to ... there's visible signs, in that ... and I'm not talking about our
level of irritation, I'm talking about menstruation - we lose our menstruation cycle
when we've gone through the change and we've ... our hormone levels have dropped. Now, men
also have a drop in hormone levels around the age of 50 to 60, but that's not as well-advertised,
and it's because it's ... there's nothing visible for us to see. So, whereas hundreds and thousands
of years back they ... you could easily see that a female loses her hormones or the hormone levels
drop, it's only recently that we've discovered that a similar thing happens to men, and that
actually affects how well they can recover and how well they build, or easily they build muscle.
That's why you often find that you've got to train a lot harder to get the same results you
got when you were younger. Now, if we think of the main effect of this on strength training is: One,
your body will take longer to recover from the strength training session.
So, remember whenever we train, we acquire micro damage in our muscles, our bones, our tendons,
every part of the body, and the body then has to restore that and rebuild that, and that's how you
get stronger for the next session, so you can do a bit more. But if you train too quickly within
that period before it's fully recovered, you end up accumulating micro damage, and that's when you
get overuse injuries like tendinopathies. So ... and it's also actually something that we often see
in runners who consult us, that they'll go: 'Well I don't know why I have a tendinopathy or overuse
injury now, because I've just trained like I've been training for the last 20 years.' But you see,
the problem is people don't realize that their hormone levels drop around the age of 50
and then the same volume of training or intensity of training you used to be okay with - your body
is struggling to recover from, and that's what happens. So you may have to add in more recovery
days or space your training out a little bit more cleverly to allow enough recovery time.
And that may mean that you reduce your strength training sessions from three times to just twice,
or you just think about where you place it in relation to your running that you do in the week,
in your high-intensity running sessions. Now it's very difficult to know whether you're actually
recovering enough between sessions unless you do blood tests, but there are some signs that can
warn you that you may be overworking things, and one of them is if your muscles just feel
constantly tired or you just feel knackered most of the time. That's a sign that your body isn't
recovering. And it may not just be your strength training, and maybe the rest of the volume of
training you do as well. But it means that you've got to do something to help your recovery there.
Second one is, if you've done a strength training session a few days back and you still feel that
soreness - not the time to work those muscles hard again. Rather choose something different and give
them an easy workout, allow another recovery day, and then you can safely train them again.
Another sign that muscles are struggling or tissue is struggling to recover is if you have
constantly tight, stiff muscles, and if you foam roll or massage them or stretch them,
they can feel better for half an hour, hour, few hours maybe, but then they feel tight again.
That's usually a sign of something that's struggling to recover or cope with what you're
doing. And it's best to then actually look at what can be the cause rather than trying to fix
it through stretching or foam rolling. Now, okay, so age can play a role in how quickly you recover.
So, you may want to reduce the number of strength training sessions you do in a week,
but two strength training sessions tend to work for most people. Then, the second thing is: as we
get older, our bodies struggle to build muscles, so we're not that good at building muscle. And
there are a few reasons for that, it's not just one reason. But some of the main ones include that
when we're young, like in our 20s, if we eat 20 grams of protein, we don't really have to work
really hard, that already stimulates the body to produce muscle. But this response to protein we
eat decreases as we get older, and they've shown that for older adults, we need to eat about 30
grams of protein. Plus, the type of protein we eat is quite important ... leucine is the best one,
and it's ... you can get it in a lot of supplements and things and food sources as well.
So, make sure that you eat enough protein in your diet in the first instance, but secondly also what
we have the protein in combination with. So, if we combine protein with a lot of carbohydrates,
then the body doesn't respond that well with building muscle in response to that.
Also, how we time when we eat that protein can make a difference. So,
if you have it within a certain ... about half an hour to an hour of either before you
exercise or after you exercise, you tend to get a better muscle building response in the body
to that. So, there are a few considerations. Now, I'm not a dietitian, so it's really good
if you ... if you're serious about this and you want some really targeted advice,
speak to a nutritionist or a dietitian who can help you with this. Then,
chronic low-grade inflammation is another thing that can cause muscle wasting
in the body, and as we get older, this seems to happen more frequently.
Now, lifestyle is a very important factor for this, and the first thing we'll start with,
is looking at what you put in your mouth. So, certain things like high sugar diets - and
when we talk about high sugar diets it's not just sugar, it's also things like refined carbohydrates
in large volumes ... so, white bread, cakes, you name it - that can cause chronic glow or can
contribute to this. Processed foods - so anything that has been already processed by the time that
you eat it from the shop can contribute to that, and certain ones may be worse than others. So,
if it's high in trans fats, for instance, but they're usually also high in sugar, those things.
Then, alcohol. Unfortunately, if you like a beer or a glass of wine, think about the volume you
take in throughout a week, because that's a big factor. Things like smoke, and we're not
just talking about smoking but we're talking about ... South Africans - we love barbecues - smoke is
smoke, that type of smoke also contributes to it, so make sure where you stand when you barbecue.
Other things that's important for that, is sleep and rest. High levels of stress can
contribute as well. What am I leaving out here? Those are the most common ones. Let me just
quickly check ... that can cause or contribute to that. Yeah, I've named them all, and then lastly,
third factor that can contribute to, while either making it difficult for you to build muscle
or make you lose muscle more easily as you get older, is if you have a lack of Vitamin D. Now,
Vitamin D is produced by the sun, and we all know that it's good for bones probably by this time,
but actually Vitamin D is a vital ... plays a vital role in nearly every process in the body.
And one of them that it influences, is how easily you build muscle, the quality of muscle you build,
and how ... how well you hold on to the muscle you've built. Vitamin D is mainly produced through
the sun shining on your skin, and part of the problem with why we're all Vitamin D deficient,
or I'm certain there's a large number of us being Vitamin D deficient these days,
is because we just don't spend that much time in the sun without sunblock anymore,
because of course, skin cancer is a big issue as well to think about and it makes your your skin
age prematurely. But then also, interestingly, they've done studies where they've looked at
people in the UK, for instance, who ... runners who run throughout the year,
come even through the bad weather, and they spend significant periods of time outside - they still
were Vitamin D deficient, because the sun in the UK for large periods throughout the year
is just not strong enough to actually produce enough Vitamin D for you. So, make sure that,
if you're not actually spending a lot of time in quality sunshine, or you just don't have access to
it, or perhaps you're like me, who work indoors most of the day, you don't really go out in the
sun that often throughout the week, then it's worth having your Vitamin D levels checked, and
chatting to your doctor. Because it may be well worth taking a supplement,
even if it's just through the winter months. Brilliant! So, to summarise: When we think of
strength training for runners and older runners, your age doesn't really determine what you do in
that session, it's your training status that does, but age does have an effect on how quickly you
recover and also how easily you build muscle. So, you may want to factor that in. But observe how
your body responds to things and experiment a little bit, because we're all different.
Excellent! If you need more help with an injury, you're always welcome to consult
one of us via video call - link to the website is in the description of this video. Take care!